Junction Daily Blog: Western Colorado Talk and Opinion

New Governor Poll

July 15, 2006

Rasmussen Reports released a new poll Thursday on the Colorado Governor's race. The most recent poll showed Democrat Bill Ritter leading Republican Bob Beauprez by 5 percentage points, 42 percent to 37 percent. The poll surveyed 500 likely voters on the night of July 10, the same night the Legislature reached its immigration compromise, and has a margin of error of +/- 4.5 percentage points.

This is consistent with other recent polls, so things are beginning to sort themselves out. A Wall Street Journal/Zogby poll taken on June 22 showed Ritter leading Beauprez 44.2 percent to 36.1 percent. The previous Rasmussen poll taken June 8 when Marc Holtzman was still in the mix showed Ritter ahead by the same 5-point margin over Beauprez, 43 percent to 38 percent.

As I have said before, it's better to compare polls within the same polling house than to compare polls from different houses. Rasmussen uses a slightly different formula than others to weight for party affiliation. Their polls tend to run a few points more Republican than other houses. For example, their nightly tracking poll on Bush approval ratings is consistently 3-5 points higher than other polling houses. As long as you are comparing Rasmussen to Rasmussen, the difference isn't important. The important thing is that Ritter's lead has held steady over time in the last two Rasmussen polls.

There were a couple of other interesting statistics buried in the recent Rasmussen poll. Some 71 percent of Colorado voters said that existing immigration laws should be enforced first before more reforms are considered. And 53 percent of the Colorado citizens surveyed feel that "our overall immigration policy should welcome all except criminals, national security threats, and welfare seekers." I'm not a Premium Member, so I couldn't read the actual questions. I'm assuming the poll was talking about national immigration policy.

Rasmussen also found that Colorado voters prefer a generic Democrat presidential candidate to a generic Republican candidate by 41 percent to 35 percent. That number holds up until you start asking voters about specific Republicans and specific Democrats. Hillary Clinton and Al Gore trail Rudy Giuliani and John McCain by twenty points or more. National Dems take note: the job at the top of the ticket is still wide open for "none of the above."

Did anyone else think it was funny that right under this morning's Sentinel article about the grand opening of the Bridge to Nowhere, there was another article asking us to stay off of D Road? It truly is a Bridge to Nowhere. Or maybe it's just a new housing project for the homeless. How long before the local gangs "tag" it? Should we start a pool?

Today's a contest day, and I still need to check the mouse traps, vacuum out the shack, plump up the dog bed, make sure my radio and computer are talking to each other with no problems, and make sure there's fresh water for Mugsy and a cooler of nonalcoholic fluids for me. Maybe I'll even get a nap. The contest runs from noon to midnight local time, but as a single operator station I can only work 10 of those 12 hours. Half the strategy is trying to guess when various bands will be working, when to change bands, and scheduling break time around those guesses. Your breaks must be at least 30 minutes long in this contest, so it matters. You don't want to be on a break when some band suddenly becomes hot and you could have been working new multipliers like crazy. In February, I guessed right. Last July in the same contest I guessed wrong. The difference was worth about 22,000 points, so guessing right is important.

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