New polling on Referenda C and D put issues behind. Ritter (D) favorite for Govs race.

(updated 10/18/2005)

A new Denver Post poll out today disagrees with a Rocky Mountain News poll released two days ago.


Here are the results of the Denver Post poll:

Mason-Dixon Oct 11-13
Referendum C Yes: 47% No: 44% Undecided: 9% MOE:4%
Referendum D Yes: 44% No: 45% Undecided: 11% MOE:4%

These results are interesting because they contrast somewhat with the results from the Rocky Mountain News poll. The RMN poll put support for C at 49% and D at 50%. The results of the Denver Post poll are within the margin of error of the earlier RMN poll, but they pull the average significantly down.

As a result we are further modifying our election projections:

Referendum C is Too Close To Call Yes: 49.4% No: 50.6% Probability: See Footnote.

Referendum D is Too Close To Call Yes: 48.7% No: 51.3% Probability: See Footnote.

The poll also asked who you would vote for in the 2006 Governor's race:

Mason-Dixon Oct 11-13
Ritter (D) vs. Beauprez (R) Ritter: 42% Beauprez: 36% Undecided: 22% MOE:4%
Ritter (D) vs. Holtzman (R) Ritter: 41% Holtzman: 30% Undecided: 29% MOE:4%

Update: We've updated our Referendum C and D homepage so that you can look at the polling history of the campaign and see how the campaign has evolved over the last few months.

Correction:
Our last headline said that Referendum D was dead, that was a typo. Sorry for any confusion.

Footnote:

The reason why the races are too close to call is because the predicted vote percentages are the mean points of a zone of probability. For each predicted value (excuse the mathematics) the 95% zone of probability is -/+ 2.5.

For example, our current projection on Referendum C is that it will get 49.4% of the vote. However we can only predict to 95% accuracy that the percentage of the vote that Referendum C gets will be between 46.9% and 51.9%. The same spread applies for Referendum D. A good rule of thumb then would be that if the predicted result falls below 47.5% then we will be able to be 95% confident that the issues will fail (and vice versa if the predicted result is above 52.5%.

As for the predicted probabilities, both measures have a slightly higher than 50% probability of failing.