Democrats and their allies sought to rekindle get-out-the-vote magic, Republicans and their backers tried to match or beat them, and voters in Denver and elsewhere waited in long lines after polls closed Tuesday.
No one knew quite what to expect on Election Day, considering voting began more than two weeks earlier, when ballots were mailed.
Despite the all-mail nature of the election, lines were reported deep into the night after polls closed in Denver, Pueblo and elsewhere.
Steve Moreno, the Weld County clerk, said an influx of voters in the final two hours before polls closed threw into question whether the county would report its results by night’s end.
“We got a heavy surge right before the polls closed,” he said just after 9 p.m. Tuesday. “My hope will be that we can count it tonight.”
In central Denver, Democratic Party officials saw “considerably long lines” at 7 p.m., said Matt Inzio, spokesman for U.S. Rep Diane DeGette of Denver, who won re-election. All eligible voters in line when polls closed were allowed to cast ballots.
The extent of the last-minute ground game was clear all day. On Tuesday morning in Lakewood, a half-dozen staffers from the left-leaning environmental group Conservation Colorado gathered at the campaign office of state Sen. Andy Kerr, a Democrat seeking re-election, before heading out to canvass
Kristin Green, a field organizer, walked briskly from home to home, urging those who answered their doors to vote and leaving pamphlets at homes where her knocks went unanswered.
“You can tell some people have been knocked on already,” said Green who has canvassed at least eight times this cycle. “They know the drill.”
In the closely watched 6th Congressional District race, Republican incumbent Mike Coffman’s campaign sought to steal successful ground-game tactics of past Obama campaigns and improve on them, Coffman campaign manager Tyler Sandberg said Tuesday.
Early on, the campaign sought to energize its base with messages of the race’s national importance. It followed up with touches like handwritten notes.
The campaign pushed early voting, freeing up resources later to go after more marginal Republican voters, Sandberg said.
“With mail ballots, the presumption has been it’s better for Democrats and liberal interest groups,” said Josh Penry, a Republican consultant to the Coffman campaign. “That doesn’t have to be the case. The advantage goes to who’s best-funded and -organized.”
Republican Senate candidate Cory Gardner’s campaign guarded its ground-game details, but it was considered to be far stronger than past GOP efforts. Democrat incumbent Mark Udall’s campaign intended to knock on 100,000 doors on Election Day, a spokeswoman said.
In the governor’s race, Democrat John Hickenlooper and Republican Bob Beauprez leaned on party support for their final push.
At a south suburban office complex Tuesday, staff members and volunteers for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity staffed a phone bank while colleagues knocked on the doors of previously targeted voters who had yet to cast ballots — mostly younger adults.
The organization, which was founded by the billionaire Koch brothers, has 35 paid staffers and 100-plus volunteers in Colorado, state director Dustin Zvonek said.
“The way (the all-mail election) has changed get-out-the-vote for everybody is there was a lot of emphasis in years past on your last 72 or 96 hours,” Zvonek said. “We really put in a hard push on the front end, in those first 10 days.”
Left-leaning independent groups flooded the streets and colleges on Tuesday in hopes of matching early Republican returns.
New Era Colorado urged young people to vote statewide, including at the Auraria campus in Denver, where lines to vote were about 50 deep. The group registered almost 29,000 people to vote before the election, spokeswoman Lizzie Stephan said.
“We’re talking to everyone who walks by,” she said.
