Colorado


 * Year || Democrat || Republican || Percent Difference ||
 * 2004 || 51.69% || 47.02% || 4.67% ||
 * 2000 || 50.75% || 42.39% || 8.36% ||
 * 1996 || 45.80% || 44.43% || 1.37% ||
 * 1992 || 35.87% || 40.13% || 4.26% ||
 * 1988 || 53.06% || 45.28% || 7.78% ||

In Colorado, a pro-environment agenda is non-partisan, or post-partisan. All that separates liberals from conservatives in Colorado is the degree of which environmentally friendly policies are balanced with support for the oil industry and business. Colorado is one of the most energy policy concerned states as they also provide new oil deposits called “oil shale”. This oil shale is harder to process than crude oil but could potentially yield very significant amounts of oil. It is also interesting to note that none of the candidates have spoken of any of these alternative oil deposits in the United States. Mentioning these deposits would help McCain with his policies toward offshore drilling. However Colorado may not be ready yet to yield its oil shale to the rest of the United States as they are still debating the impacts it would have on the environment which could lose Colorado's nine electoral votes for a candidate who points it out. A new topic of great significance in Colorado is the Latino vote. The growing population seems to have been "dormant" in recent elections but now have become Colorado's swing vote. In the 1988 presidential elections, Hispanics accounted for 3.7 million votes. In 2004, it was more than twice that at 7.5 million votes. The group has not only grown, but taken more interest in this election with the new Obama who represents change. Obama leads John McCain 65-30 percent among Latinos in the latest CNN/Opinion Research polling. The Latinos are not only an emerging group in Colorado but in other states such as New Mexico, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina (North Carolina being a possible battleground state). However the fact that there are a lot of Latinos in Colorado does not guarantee that they will all vote Obama. CNN.com said that of you "Walk into a McCain campaign office in Denver, and it is not unusual to hear Spanish-language conversations about "la presidencia." If McCain is able to successfully turn this image of himself of being very diverse and having strong Latino ties outward to the voters he could very well neutralize Obama's grip on these votes, if not swing the Latino vote in some states.

Corn grown in the flat eastern part of the State is a potential resource for ethanol production, as well as Colorado’s oil shale deposits hold an estimated 1 trillion barrels of oil. That is nearly as much oil as the entire world’s "proven oil reserves". Oil production from those deposits remains speculative as the state has not reached a decision on to mine or not. However the production of Ethanol has boomed in this state, gas stations usually have E85 ethanol for sale and many people drive flex fuel vehicles. The governor of Colorado Bill Ritter has been an avid supporter and activist when it comes to alternative fuels. Colorado also has potential for geothermal energy due to its geological and volcanic activity made obvious from geysers. Also the tall hills in the mountains have excellent and promising wind energy potential. Colorado may be the most energy conscious state in this election year, and so it goes without saying to win Colorado a candidate will have to prove their energy policy, and possibly tailor it to appease Colorado. Colorado is a state that will usually vote republican, while the margins of which it did not vote democrat are rather small compared to other republican states. This is because Colorado is generally republican, though dotted with heavily liberal cities such as Boulder, Ft. Collins and Colorado Springs. These concentrations of liberal votes whose votes Obama already has vs. a widespread republican population that would take too much effort to swing could mean that the votes will not change dramatically from years before where the republicans lead by a healthy margin. On the other hand the eligible voter population has risen 13 percent, which is young voters and an increasing number of minorities.  With the new issues at hand and how the state is favoring Obama as he is seen as the one with the answers on the topic of green energy and the environment. If one includes the weight of the emerging Latino vote it seems that Colorado also possibly vote Democrat this election year if McCain does not find a way to spread his image of being a good choice for Latino voters. However Obama does not have a guaranteed win or even an even base in this state as it has voted mainly republican for the past few years. The margins between the number of democrat and republican votes have been creeping closer and closer and we could easily see Colorado vote democrat this year.

On Tuesday 10/22/08 Barack Obama iwas leading John McCain by about five points in Colorado, 50.9 percent to 45.2 percent. McCain's popularity had been going up by one percent each week, but had gone up another percent in one day. It seemed like McCain was on an upward trend in this state but he had dropped in the polls as election day grew closer. After the votes were tallied up, Obama had won the state of Colorado with 50.9% of the vote, and McCain only received 44.3%. http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11900705 http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/23/king.battleground.colorado/index.html?iref=werecommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado#Government_and_Politics http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/13590/ http://usliberals.about.com/od/electionreform/ig/Issues-in-Five-Key-States/Top--08-Issues-in-Colorado.htm http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2004/s1226283.htm