Colorado independent voters have never been able to vote in major party primaries, until 2018. This article presents evidence gathered by Magellin Strategies about how independent voters will act in Colorado primaries this year.
The standard academic vocabulary for the term “open primary” considers Colorado in 2018 to have a semi-closed primary, not an open primary. But the Colorado media does not conform to the standard academic word usage and says Colorado has an open primary. Actual open primary state do not have registration by party, and there are 19 actual open primary states. Colorado does have registration by party. A semi-closed primary is one in which independents can choose any party’s primary ballot, but members of parties are confined to their own party’s primary ballot.
Does MS have inside info and occult predictions about *will act* lottery winners, Prez winners, super-Bowl winners, etc. in the next 100 / 1000 years ???
Lack of oxygen and no politics dictionaries in high CO Rocky Mountains ???
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NO primaries.
PR and AppV
Colorado has all-mail elections, so unaffiliated voters will be sent two ballots and told that they can only vote one.
Colorado has roughly equal numbers of Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, but ordinarily the ratio of inactive/active voters is much higher for unaffiliated voters, meaning that even when they are registered, they don’t vote – or perhaps are more likely to leave the state. Unaffiliated might be characterized as independent, but it could also mean indifferent or indolent.
Colorado did not have a presidential primary in 2016, so there would likely been few unaffiliated voters becoming Democrats. They would not only have to act to become affiliated, they would have to attend a caucus. Outside college campuses, few would bother. The active Democrats who did attend caucuses were often Bernie-bots. It was the Colorado state convention that chose the faithless electors.
So a Democratic primary may be more moderate than the caucuses. But the more conservative registered Democrats may not vote in primaries, and either vote for the candidates with a (D) next to their name in the general election, or may vote for some (R)’s. They might have never bothered to change their registration.
I’d guess that unaffiliated voters will be about 1/3 as likely to vote in a primary as (R) and (D). Remember that they don’t participate as much in general elections. If 2/3 of those pick a (D) ballot, that would make them about 18% of the (D) primary electorate and 10% of the (R) primary electorate. That could be enough to tilt an election if they significantly different than the (D) voters.