2010 Colorado Governor - Maes vs. Hickenlooper vs. Tancredo

11/2/10, 7:10am -- Hickenlooper is still probably the favorite, but the Tancredo surge is real.  If Republican voters go into the booth and decide that they're throwing away their voting pulling the level for Dan Maes, Tancredo could win.

10/26/10 -- The preponderance of the evidence suggests that the Tancredo surge is real.  There are very few undecideds at this point, and there might be just enough Republicans voting for Maes to keep Tancredo from pulling in the 47 percent of the vote or so that he needs to win.

10/9/10 -- Could Tom Tancredo pull this off?  That's the question some analysts are beginning to ask themselves here.  Mayor Hickenlooper seems to be stuck at around 45 percent in the polls, while Tancredo steadily eats away at Dan Maes' Republican support.  But there's a certain level below which a Republican simply won't fall.  As long as that level in Colorado is above 10 percent, Hickenlooper should be alright, but if it is lower, he might have to start sweating.

----------Race Preview---------

Somewhere in Denver, Bill Ritter is kicking himself for not running for re-election. While Democrats have dominated the state’s gubernatorial races in recent decades, winning seven of the last 10 elections, Ritter’s job approval and re-elect numbers against former Representative Scott McInnis were very weak for most of last year. So despite Ritter’s seemingly broad mandate in 2006, when he rolled to a 57%-40% win over Republican Representative Bob Beauprez, the governor announced that he would not run for re-election.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper jumped in, and kept his numbers reasonably close to McInnis’s. Then a bombshell dropped on the race. A story surfaced that McInnis had plagiarized an article when he was a fellow for an organization called the Hasan Family Foundation. He received $300,000 for his work at the organization. McInnis tried to blame the incident on a staffer, who denied that he had conducted the plagiarism.

In the wake of the revelation, polls showed a race that was still close, but with Hickenlooper moving into the lead. McInnis lost the Republican primary to political newcomer Dan Maes, who has come under fire for misrepresenting his law enforcement experience in Kansas during the 1980s. Further complicating matters, former Congressman Tom Tancredo entered the race as the American Constitution Party candidate.

As a result of the upheaval on the right, the Democrats’ odds of holding the governorship have improved dramatically over the past few months.