Colorado Governor Forecast & Polls

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RacetotheWH Forecast & Interactives

Democrats have held the Governor Mansion in Denver since 2006. Paradoxically, that may make Republicans feel optimistic this year because voters in the US tend to prefer change. It’s going to be challenging even in a strong environment for Republicans because the Centennial State is no longer nearly as competitive after a sharp lurch to the left in the Obama and Trump years. Time will tell if Republicans' slide with white college-educated voters is enduring, or whether it will bounce back from the lows of the Trump era. If it’s the latter, they have a better chance of mounting a successful upset.

Still, it’s not hopeless for Republicans. Colorado is not California. It leans 6% towards Democrats -a clear but not insurmountable advantage. Early polls show that Democratic Jared Polis is quite popular. He’s become known nationally for chartering a middle course on Covid, initially taking aggressive steps to limit the pandemic, but was months ahead of most other Democrats on reducing restrictions and encouraging businesses to reopen. Polis said about the restrictions, “We have to understand that while of course there's an economic cost of caution, it's also about the social-emotional cost of people.”

Heidi Ganahl, who won a statewide election to the Colorado Board of Regents, is the Republican nominee. She’s promised to bolster the police department, lower taxes, and address the mental health crisis. Our Governor Forecast predicts how likely each of the three GOP candidates is to be able to win the general election, and the chance the Republican party as a whole has against Polis. Our state forecasts go further than anyone else when it comes to using data to show all aspects of the political battleground, including the latest polling, current fundraising levels, a map showing the partisan lean of each county, approval ratings for every candidate, and a trendline of the state’s shifting politics since 1965.

In 2020, RacetotheWH was one of the most accurate forecasts in the nation. In Colorado, our projection was almost perfect. We predicted that Governor John Hickenlooper would beat Senator Corey Gardner by 9.3%, and his actual margin of victory was 9.32%.