Monday, October 30, 2006

New model coming soon, preliminary findings support Democratic gains.

We are working on our second version of our econometric model for the Colorado State Legislature. After the data from 2000 was added we discovered that the model needed some major retooling.

Here are our basic findings as of right now.

Democrats are more "efficient" at getting votes than Republicans in Colorado. All things being equal, if you have a district that is divided evenly between Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters, the Democrat will win 3 out of 4 times. After tonight we will have different regression equations for the last three elections to show how the Democrats have become more efficient.

2004 was a "wave" election for the Democrats. There is still a lot of arguing going on over here, but something changed in Colorado in 2004. The Democrats picked up 7 State House seats (the equivalent of over 50 US House seats). Some of us think that Amendment 27 (campaign finance) is the key, others think that the GOP is more divided than it was before. Nevertheless, by this time tomorrow we should have a new model out, and new predictions for the State House and State Senate.

The Rocky Mountain News has a great story out today on the GOPs slide from power in the Legislature. Check it out here. The one flaw we saw in it, no talk of the power of Amendment 27.

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