Colorado's Swing Voters

Our Colorado survey this week found 5% of voters undecided, and another 9% who do have a current preference amenable to changing their minds. That means about 13-14% of the electorate is still persuadable.

Who are these swing voters?

-A significant plurality- 45%- are independents. That may seem like a no brainer but in a lot of other states there are a good number of them who are Democrats not convinced about Barack Obama. That doesn't seem to be as much of a problem for him in Colorado- his party is pretty strongly lined up behind him.

-55% of them list the economy as their biggest issue, compared to 51% in the overall electorate. This is becoming a trend in PPP's state polls across the country. There seems to be a small segment of the electorate that is going to wait to definitively pick a candidate until they decide that one is clearly better equipped than the other to bring the sort of leadership that can help out people's pocketbooks. Whoever can do is that is likely to win not just in Colorado but nationwide.

-They are very disproportionately male and under 30. 58% are men compared to 48% in the total sample, and 23% are young compared to 15% overall. In particular there are a lot of young Hispanic voters who could go either way. We found a similar trend in the New Mexico poll we released earlier this week.

Good news for Obama:

-The voters who are still up in the air for President support Mark Udall 46-24. So they're quite open to voting Democratic.

-They're ok with Joe Biden, not with Sarah Palin. Biden's favorability with these folks is 36/32, Palin's is 29/50.

The Bottom Line:

Every poll that's come out recently has shown Obama with a decent lead in Colorado, and there's not much in analyzing the swing voters to indicate it's a particularly favorable group to John McCain.