As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump angle for Colorado voters, what鈥檚 not clear is how relevant the state will be on election night. By the looks of several election maps, the race is already over. The victor, if the trend holds, is Clinton, with the state colored a shade of Democrat blue.
Yet Clinton鈥檚 Colorado campaign director, Emmy Ruiz, isn鈥檛 resting easy.
鈥淚t is a very competitive state,鈥� Ruiz said. 鈥淚t is a state that, for example, in 2014 sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate. So we know we have our work cut out for us. We鈥檙e not going to take anything for granted and we鈥檙e going to do everything we can to make sure Colorado is Clinton country.鈥�
Ruiz and Patrick Davis, who directs Republican Trump's Colorado campaign, visited KUNC 暗黑爆料 in separate interviews.
Davis is as convinced as Ruiz that Colorado will be a critical state to the presidential race.
鈥淓very map in this country for 270 electoral votes leads through Colorado,鈥� Davis said. 鈥淭he path to the White House leads through Colorado.鈥�
At the moment, Clinton has a wide lead over Trump in the state. Her average advantage is nearly 12 points, .
Yet the numbers Ruiz is most concerned about are Colorado鈥檚 voter registrations. There are 953,042 voters registered as Democrats across the state, .
That's slightly less than the 964,738 Republicans registered across Colorado. Unaffiliated voters in the state are the largest bloc at 1,020,697.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e going to see us moving full speed across Colorado 鈥� in Greeley, Loveland, Aurora, Pueblo, the Slope, Denver, everywhere in between,鈥� Ruiz said.
The Trump campaign plans essentially the same kind of exhaustive campaigning, putting boots on the ground to prompt discussions on positions on issues like the economy and immigration that go beyond the headlines and sound bites.
Still, it is no secret that both Clinton and Trump have struggled in Colorado to gain support within their own parties. Democrats backed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 caucus, and many Republicans pushed for Ted Cruz. Both campaigns said they've seen signs the wounds of the caucuses are healing, but some polls show a sizeable percentage of Colorado voters abandoning the mainstream for third party candidates. For example, found 7 percent support for the Green Party鈥檚 presidential candidate, Jill Stein. The same poll found 16 percent support for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson in Colorado.
Davis predicts support for third party candidates will come down significantly as Election Day nears on Nov. 8.
鈥淚n my experience, reality strikes when that ballot is sitting in front of you and you have to throw away your vote on a third party candidate when you know that it鈥檚 not going to help elect either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton,鈥� Davis said.
