Unlikely Voter

Any political party must work as a team to win. While the primary process will become at times a competitive and even divisive, any inability to set those feelings aside and back the nominee will give the party trouble.

A few Republicans this cycle know what kind of trouble that is, but none has more than Dan Maes against Democrat John Hickenlooper for Colorado Governor. He got opposition from the national party, and he’s collapsed in the polls.

Colorado is one of those states where the Republican Party had done pretty poorly lately. It looked like this year was the year of mending though, but it’s hard to see that in the Governor’s race. Democrat John Hickenlooper leads Republican Dan Maes easily in the new Rasmussen, but that’s because of a third party protest run going on this year.

It seems like most of the third party and independent spoilers this year are harming Democrats, but the Constitution Party’s Tom Tancredo is clearly hurting Republican Dan Maes in the Colorado Governor’s race, currently throwing the lead to Democrat John Hickenlooper.

But two new polls on that race, from Magellan Strategies via Real Clear Politics and Rasmussen Reports are so different that I think we need to see why that is.

SurveyUSA polled Colorado for KUSA and the Denver Post. There is in fact more going on than the chaos of the Republican primary for Governor.

The Democrats also have primaries going on, and SUSA shows movement there, too.