5280 Magazine – May 2018

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Purple Haze

This year, thanks to Proposition 108, unaffiliated

voters can weigh in on either the Republican

or Democratic primary. Inside the new law that

could reshape Colorado elections.

A

s statewide returns rolled in on November 8, 2016, some-

thing happened that has the potential to change Colorado’s

political landscape—dramatically. It wasn’t the result of the

presidential election or any particular statewide seat. No, it

was the passage of Proposition 108, which expands the Centennial

State’s primary elections to include unailiated voters. Previously,

Colorado’s closed primary system had allowed only party members

to vote in primary elections. hat wasn’t a big deal when most of

the state’s voters were registered with a political party. But unaf-

iliated voters—individuals who choose not to register with one of

the state’s major or minor parties—have grown steadily and now

account for more than one-third of the state’s eligible voters. hat

shift means candidates should court unailiated voters in order to

win primaries. In short, wooing your own party isn’t enough.

Contentious closed pri-

maries can pull candidates to

ideological poles in an efort to

appease the party faithful. hat

can cause challenges in a gen-

eral election, when candidates

may struggle to win over unaf-

iliated voters with the same

messages (see “Color Wheel”

on page 91). “he concern of a

really tough primary, on both

sides, is your primary elector-

ate,” says Paul Teske, dean of

the University of Colorado

Denver’s School of Public

Afairs. “If you really engage in a tough primary, you are close to

the further extremes of your party.” Proposition 108, some thought,

might ix that. Governor John Hickenlooper and several former

governors endorsed the plan. he people agreed: Proposition 108

passed with 52.8 percent of the vote.

Now it’s time to see if unailiated voters will cast ballots in the

primaries, which typically have low turnout. (In Colorado’s last

open gubernatorial race, in 2010, about 37 percent of active Demo-

cratic voters and 45 percent of active Republican voters participated

in the primaries.) Unailiateds might not cast ballots in June for a

variety of reasons, including the fact that if they vote in either the

Republican or Democratic primary, which contest they voted in

will become part of the public record.

“Sometimes, new voting initiatives take several election cycles

to take efect,” says Seth Masket, a professor at the University of

Denver’s Department of Political Science. He says Proposition 108

could gain momentum as voters become familiar with the process

but is skeptical it will have much of an efect. When asked if “party

raiding” (if, say, Republican-leaning unailiateds voted for a Demo-

cratic candidate they think would lose in the general election—or

vice versa) is a concern, Masket said it was possible, but unlikely. “It

is pretty rare and requires an unusual level of organization to pull

that of,” he says. “Right now, there are pretty competitive races in

both parties. here is quite a bit to keep partisans busy.”

Source: Colorado Secretary of State, as of February 1

THE GREAT DIVIDE

Many unaffiliated voters don’t

like to be defined, which is part

of the reason they confound

campaigns and keep politics

interesting in Colorado. Their

political beliefs stretch across

the continuum. They don’t

want, or need, to have their

politics served in a binary mode.

But that doesn’t stop peo-

ple from trying to figure these

voters out. “Polling would tell

us that if you really pry into

those preferences, most are

closet Democrats or Republi-

cans,” says Kyle Saunders, an

associate professor in political

science at Colorado State Uni-

versity, but he cautions against

oversimplification.

We do know that register-

ing as “unaffiliated” is popular

with young voters (ages 18

to 35). “About half of young

people are registering as unaf-

filiated,” says Lizzy Stephan,

the executive director of non-

partisan New Era Colorado,

which leads one of the state’s

largest voter registration proj-

ects. “They put issues first,

rather than candidates.”

Magellan Strategies, a Re-

publican polling and political

strategy firm, surveyed poten-

tial unaffiliated general election

voters in the state this past

December to see if they might

vote in the 2018 primary—and

how. “Among people who did

intend to participate—about 40

percent—27 percent planned to

vote in the Democratic primary

and 12 percent in the Repub-

lican primary, because, they

said, ‘I want my voice heard,

and I want two good choices,’ ”

says founder and CEO David

Flaherty. The poll also found

that 62 percent of respondents

had unfavorable views of the

Republican Party while 39

percent had unfavorable views

of Democrats—which may indi-

cate difficult odds for the GOP

in Colorado come November.

Are unaffiliated voters really unaffiliated?

Libertarian Party American Constitution Party

Green Party Unity Party

Unaffiliated Democratic Party Republican Party

1%

<1% <1%

<1%

31%

31%

36%

PARTY AFFILIATION OF ACTIVE VOTERS

A SLICE OF THE PIE