Just over three weeks before mail ballots go out to Colorado voters, a pair of polls released this week said Republican Senate candidate U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner and gubernatorial nominee Bob Beauprez hold commanding leads over Democratic incumbents U.S. Sen. Mark Udall and Gov. John Hickenlooper, marking a dramatic shift from previous polling that has shown the races too close to call.

But a flurry of other polls also released in the past week paint a different picture of the midterm electorate in the purple state, saying either that the races are toss-ups or that the Democrats are ahead.

Republicans trumpeted the results of the polls that show Beauprez and Gardner way out in front, though Democrats called those surveys outliers and said that their internal numbers leave them confident.

Quinnipiac University released a poll of the Colorado gubernatorial race on Wednesday morning, pegging Beauprez with 50 percent support and Hickenlooper at 40 percent among likely voters. Libertarian candidate Matthew Hess and Green Party candidate Harry Hempy each polled 3 percent support in the survey, which was conducted by contacting 1,211 voters by telephone between Sept. 10-15 and had a stated margin of error of plus-or-minus 2.8 percent.

The next morning, Quinnipiac’s Colorado Senate poll put Gardner at 48 percent support vs. Udall’s 40 percent. Independent candidate Steve Shogan got 8 percent. (The survey had the same methodology and margin of error as the outfit’s other statewide poll.)

The last time Quinnipiac polled the races, in July, Beauprez led by 1 point and Gardner led by 2 points, both with a plus-or-minus 2.9 percent margin of error, although that poll sampled registered voters without applying a filter to sort out those who said they were likely to vote.

In results that stunned political observers, the Quinnipiac poll said that Beauprez was winning the women’s vote, 47 percent to 46 percent, and was leading among unaffiliated voters by 13 points.

“Pundits were predicting that Gov. Hickenlooper faced a close race for reelection,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll in a statement. “Instead, he’s got a mad dash to make up a double-digit deficit. The Democrat does not get the traditional strong support from women to offset Bob Beauprez’s army of support from men.”

According to the poll, Beauprez leads among male voters by 20 points.

In addition, Malloy noted that Hickenlooper trails Beauprez on precisely the characteristics the Republican has been hammering since he entered the race just over six months ago: honesty and trustworthiness, strong leadership and caring about “the needs and problems of people like you.”

Beauprez welcomed the Quinnipiac results but said they weren’t going to alter his campaign.

In a statement issued on Wednesday morning, Beauprez said, “[T]his poll simply confirms what we’re hearing on the ground — voters want a strong leader with character who’ll stand up for Colorado and make the tough decisions to help our state. Our state desperately needs stronger leadership and with 48 days left to go, we are not going to let this or any other poll distract us from getting the job done and giving Colorado the leadership it deserves. We are going to run like we’re behind.”

Later that morning, however, two other polls came out that showed Hickenlooper in the lead.

A poll conducted for USA Today by Suffolk University showed Hickenlooper with 43 percent support and Beauprez at 41 percent among likely voters with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.4 percent. That poll relied on telephone interviews with 500 likely voters between Sept. 13-16 and didn’t ask about minor-party candidates.

The liberal Project New America group also released its gubernatorial poll, conducted by the Democratic polling firm Myers Research, and it showed Hickenlooper well ahead, with 51 percent support to Beauprez’s 44 percent. It had a margin of error of 2.7 percent and involved telephone interviews with 1,350 likely voters.

“These two polls today, and the Marist/NBC poll and Denver Post Poll from last week show that we’re in the lead in a close race,” said Hickenlooper campaign manager Brad Komar in a statement. “Right now we are leading in support, fundraising and polling, and that’s because folks support John’s work to help Colorado grow and strengthen our economy.”

(The Denver Post poll showed Hickenlooper up by 2 points and the NBC poll had the governor leading by 4 points, although a Rasmussen Reports poll also released last week put Beauprez ahead by 1 point. In each of last week’s polls, the leads were within the polls’ stated margins of error.)

Komar pointed to fundraising and spending patterns he contends show that it’s Beauprez who is on the ropes, noting that the Republican Governors Association recently lobbed $2 million in attack ads at the Democrat without concurrent response from Hickenlooper — likely driving up his negatives, if temporarily — but that the RGA has pulled its ads from the state just as Hickenlooper is starting his airwave campaign.

What’s more, Komar said, Beauprez only has $363,000 cash on hand, while the Hickenlooper campaign has already paid for and reserved $2.3 million in statewide advertising aimed at voters when they’ve got ballots in hand.

Competing polls told a similar story about the Senate race this week. The USA Today survey had Gardner ahead by 1 point, well within its 4.4 percent margin of error, and the PNA poll put Udall up by 2 points. Last week’s Post poll said Udall was up by 4 points, while the NBC poll said Udall was 6 points ahead.

Udall campaign manager Adam Dunstone took to Twitter to comment on the surveys, without mentioning the Quinnipiac poll by name.

“It’s a tight race, was always going to be that way. Internals have been steady, no wild swings like you see in the news,” Dunstone tweeted on Thursday morning. “Lots of noise this week, but all internals since March have Udall leading, with last two 47/42 & 48/42. Onward!”

Boulder pollster Chris Keating’s firm has been conducting internal polling for the Udall campaign, a spokesman said, and the results gleaned on Sept. 15-16 showed the incumbent up by 5 points among likely voters. The sample weighed heavily toward a high Republican turnout — surpassing Democrats by 6 percentage points and unaffiliated voters by 12 points — in keeping with expectations that GOP voters are more motivated in the midterm.

The Gardner campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Colorado Statesman, but in a newsletter sent out on Thursday morning, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee wrote, “Our internals have shown the race a dead heat throughout the summer.” Following the first debate between Udall and Gardner, Brad Dayspring wrote, “the momentum shifted” and Gardner now leads in “multiple polls.”

— Ernest@coloradostatesman.com