By the Numbers

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

The Colorado Secretary of State certified Colorado's 2020 General Election results yesterday, and then published the statistics regarding how Coloradans turned out:

Total voter turnout:     3,291,548                                 

Mail ballots:                3,092,903 
In-person ballots:       198,645

Democratic:                1,020,321 
Republican:                941,313 
Unaffiliated:                1,276,834 
Other:                          53,080

Female:                       1,683,598 
Male:                           1,554,730 
Unknown:                    53,220

If you're a visual learner, the SOS office also has a handy document with all kinds of charts and additional detail on the statistical values above. 

Things I find interesting: 

  • This election had the largest voter turnout in Colorado history. Hurray! We give a damn!
  • According to the WashPo, Colorado's voter turnout was fourth in the nation at 75.5%. Only Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin turned out more voters as a share of the voting eligible populations. That's a record, but that still means 25% of eligible voters in Colorado didn't turn out to vote either via drop off ballot or in person. Boo! 25% of us don't give a damn! (Mandatory voting, anyone?)
  • In my own county, the voter turnout was higher than the Colorado average. Douglas knows how to encourage citizens to vote, and then makes it easy for them to do so.*
  • Unaffiliated voters had the largest number of votes cast, and we're also the largest percentage of active registered voters at 40.9%, 10+ points above both the Democrats (29.95%) or the Republicans (27.31%). People are tired of the two-party system here in Colorado, and I think this trend holds nationwide. This makes my heart happy. 
  • More women than men voted in the 2020 General Election, in every age category. Please don't tell me you need me to explain why this was the case. 
  • Younger people (18-34) represented 26.8% of the votes cast and the 25-34 age range returned more ballots than any other cohort. This also makes my heart happy. I'm sick to death of old, white, rich, CIS-gender, straight men having almost exclusive control over the decision-making process for our country. 
So that's the Colorado 2020 General Election by the numbers. I can't wait for the Inauguration, and after that, a return to normalcy. (ARE YOU LISTENING, FOURTH ESTATE? ONCE PRESIDENT ELECT BIDEN TAKES OFFICE, PLEASE DISCONTINUE THE NON-STOP COVERAGE OF THE LYING LIAR OF LIES DIAPER-BABY WHO CURRENTLY OCCUPIES THE WHITE HOUSE. 

I'M BEGGING YOU. 
______________________

*NOTE: Colorado's drop off/mail in ballot program is considered the Gold Standard for this type of process. Not so coincidentally, it was first deployed in Douglas County under the leadership of County Clerk Merlin Klotz. After the new process was deployed, Douglas County ended up with the highest voter participation rates of any County in the nation. So the SOS decided that they needed to get them some of THAT, and therein lies history. Please note that Mr. Klotz is a Republican in a largely Republican county. Election integrity isn't a Republican thing or a Democratic thing, or an unaffiliated thing. It's a Democracy thing, so sit down and STFU about imaginary voter fraud. There is no evidence that it's true, all the cases have been tossed into the dumpster fire that is the tRump Presidency by responsible Judges, and the Loser's attempts to coerce election officials into disenfranchising their entire populations have fallen on deaf ears. IT'S NOT TRUE. And as the Georgia Secretary of State, an elected Republican official says, "Truth matters, especially around election administration." I remember a time when the Republican Party as a whole actually believed that, and I hope they throw tRump into the dustbin of history and return to their pre-Reagan intellectual roots. But leave the racism with tRump, please.