Many observers are interested to see how the final pre-election turnout numbers stack up against historical turnouts. For the purposes of comparison, included is the last general election (2008) and the previous two midterm election results (2006, 2002) for 11 “battleground” counties that account for 83 percent of the votes in Colorado (2023625/2437772 “active” voters).
The turnout from early voting and mail-in balloting is already reaching 2002 final totals in the 11 profiled counties, and is between 15-20 percent below 2006 numbers. With nearly 1.1 million votes already cast, a reasonable expectation would be a 60 to 70% turnout (of 2,437,772 “active” voters), or 1.5 to 1.7 million total votes by the end of Tuesday.
Republicans have a 61,530 partisan vote lead going into Election Day, or a 5.6 percent lead over Democrats. That lead may or may not be a harbinger of impending Democratic doom or a Republican wave.
DEMOCRATS: 383925 (35.1%)
REPUBLICANS: 445445 (40.7%)
UNAFFILIATEDS: 257645 (23.6%)
TOTAL: 1093600
Battleground counties:
All voter registration/status as of 10/01/10:
Dem “active”–47.99% (383925/799981)
Dem registered–35.78% (383925/1073165)
Repub “active”–51.64% (445445/862575)
Repub registered–41.27% (445445/1079411)
UAF “active”–33.99% (257645/757935)
UAF registered–23.30% (257645/1105522)
Total vote percentage of “active”–44.86% (1093600/2437772)
Total vote percentage of registered–33.31% (1093600/3282855)