Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet are leading their Republican opponents – in some cases by double-digit margins – in Colorado, according to four public opinion surveys released in the last week.

Clinton’s average lead in Colorado over Republican nominee Donald Trump is 9.5 points, according to polls conducted in early July by Harper Polling, Monmouth University, Fox News and NBC News/The Wall Street Journal.

On average, Bennet is ahead of his Republican challenger, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, by 12.25 points.

In the race for the state’s nine electoral, Clinton holds a 7-point lead over Trump, 45-38, a survey conducted among likely state voters by Republican-leaning Harper Polling said.

Bennet leads Glenn by 6 points, 46-40, in the Harper poll, the first publicly available poll since the conservative underdog won the GOP nomination in a crowded primary at the end of June.

A slim plurality of voters – 42-40 percent – say they would be less likely to support the Democratic ticket if Gov. John Hickenlooper were the vice presidential nominee, the poll shows.

All four surveys show that the two major-party presidential candidates are unpopular with Colorado voters. The surveys that measure familiarity with candidates also showed that Glenn is mostly a big unknown among statewide voters.

Clinton and Bennet hold identical 13-point leads in Colorado over Trump and Glenn, respectively, according to a Monmouth University poll when voters were asked to pick a candidate among a field that included Libertarian and Green Party candidates in both races.

Among likely Colorado voters, Clinton leads Trump 48-35 among likely voters, Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson has 5 percent support, Green Party candidate Jill Stein has 3 percent, 3 percent say they’re picking another candidate and 7 percent are undecided.

“Clinton does better among practically every demographic in Colorado than she does nationally. It is way too early to call, but if this dynamic holds, she could end up with the largest electoral margin for a Democrat here since 1964,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, referring to President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide over Republican challenger Barry Goldwater.

Colorado has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate just three times since then, when Bill Clinton won the state in 1992, and Barack Obama’s two wins in 2008 and 2012.

Bennet is ahead of Glenn by the same 48-35 percent. Libertarian Lily Tang Williams has 3 percent, Green Party nominee Arn Menconi has 2 percent and 12 percent say they’re undecided in the Senate race.

Clinton is sitting on a 10-point lead over Trump in the Fox News poll, which was conducted jointly by Democratic and Republican polling firms. The same poll shows Bennet beating Darryl Glenn by 15 points.

Clinton has a 44-34 percent advantage over Trump in the poll, a lead that shrinks by a point to 37-28 when the question was expanded to include Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. In the four-way contest, Colorado voters give Johnson 13 points and Stein 6 points.

Bennet trounces Glenn 51-36 in the Fox News poll. The Democrat, who is seeking his second full term, performs best with women, Hispanics, those with college degrees and voters older than 45. But he runs ahead of Glenn across nearly every category, losing only among self-identified conservatives and white evangelicals.

Clinton does best among women, Hispanics, voters with a college degree and those who say they’re extremely interested in the election. Trump wins among white voters without a college degree, rural residents and white evangelicals.

In perhaps the Fox News survey’s biggest surprise, Johnson is running ahead of Trump among the state’s unaffiliated voters, although it’s just by a hair. In the last presidential election in Colorado, when President Barack Obama won the state by about 5 points over Republican Mitt Romney, Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, received 1 percent of the vote.

Broken down by self-identified party affiliation, Clinton leads among Democrats and unaffiliated voters in the Fox News poll, while Trump wins Republicans, but Johnson comes in second with independents, with 22-percent support, ahead of Trump’s 20 percent. (Clinton is ahead with 29 percent in that group and Stein scores 10 percent.)

Hickenlooper scores a 55-percent favorable rating, just ahead of President Obama, who gets 54 percent.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist Poll of battleground states shows Clinton leading Trump 43-35 among registered voters in Colorado. (She’s also ahead by single digits in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, the survey shows.)

Bennet leads Glenn by 15 points, 53-38, among registered voters, according to the NBC News poll.

All four polls were conducted during various stretches in the first two weeks of July. The margins of error for the polls were plus-or-minus 4.38 percent for the Harper poll, plus-or-minus 4.9 percent for the Monmouth University poll, plus-or-minus 4 points for the Fox News poll and plus-or-minus 3.5 percent for the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist Poll.

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com