The final Public Policy Polling survey shows Colorado’s Senate battle between Sen. Michael Bennet and Ken Buck shaping up as a potential nail-biter lasting late into Wednesday morning if the margins stay this close (via CompleteColorado.com):
The Senate race in Colorado continues to look like it will be one of the closest in the country on Tuesday night. PPP’s final poll there finds Ken Buck ahead of Michael Bennet by the slimmest of margins, 49-48.
Each candidate has his party base pretty much sewn up. Bennet is winning 87% of Democrats and Buck is winning 86% of Republicans. Giving Buck his slim lead is a 50-46 advantage among independents.
One thing interesting to note within the results is that with respondents who say they’ve already voted- accounting for 66% of the sample- Bennet is actually ahead by a 52-46 margin. Buck leads 55-41 with those who say they have not yet cast their ballots. Bennet should probably be rooting for ugly weather on election day, any little thing could help in such a close race if he already has a lead in the bank.
Bennet continues to sport poor approval numbers- 39% of voters give him good marks while 47% say they aren’t happy with his job performance. Those numbers, not coincidentally, correlate closely with Barack Obama’s poor 41/53 breakdown in the state. Bennet’s stayed in this race because Buck has proven to be a weak candidate as well with a 44/48 favorability. Republicans might have had an easier time with a different nominee- we looked at a hypothetical contest between Bennet and GOP primary loser Jane Norton on this poll and found Norton would lead by a wider 47-43 margin.
As for the gubernatorial contest between Democrat John Hickenlooper, Republican Dan Maes, and American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo, Hickenlooper stays in the lead at 48-43 despite Tancredo’s lead with independents, 49 to 45. The Maes partisan vote–measured in the percentage of Republicans who are still choosing to vote for Maes over Tancredo, a former Republican Congressman, are giving Hickenlooper his lead. Should Republicans continue to move away from Maes by the end of election day, Tancredo holds a slim chance of narrowing the gap. Otherwise, Hickenlooper will probably win with just a plurality of the vote.