Political parties are failing in Colorado. Redistricting occurred in February with the first voter registration numbers for new districts. A comparison of those February numbers with June registrations shows both parties losing voters and the Unaffiliated category gaining registrations.

The highest percentage of movement to Unaffiliated occurred in two southwest mountain House districts, HD-58 and HD-59, including towns from Gunnison and Montrose to Durango and Cortez. Democrats took the big hit as more than 2% of Dems moved to Unaffiliated.

Nineteen new House districts saw a voter registration change of 1% or more. Democrats took the largest loss overall, with their margins decreasing especially in the mountains, Adams County, Denver, Boulder, Grand Junction and southern Colorado. Republicans lost ground in their mainstay, Colorado Springs, and some in Highlands Ranch.

Generally, the drops follow registration size. If a district is lopsided toward one party or the other, the larger party loses more voters.

But the issue isn’t really how the numbers shifted. The most pressing concern is how the political system will work when Unaffiliated voters become a super majority as they now are in Senate District 11 in east Colorado Springs at 50.4 Unaffiliated.

SD-11 has a faceoff between Rep. Tony Exum-D and Sen. Dennis Hisey-R. Both parties lost the same percentage of voters between February and June: .06%. There’s a 2% spread between the parties at 24.4 registered Dems and 22.5 registered GOPers. At that margin, a 1% movement either way can cost the election. Exum had a primary that reduced his campaign bottom line. His current funds balance is $9,237 to Hisey’s $33,178.

You can count on those numbers changing significantly. If past is prelude to the future, the race may get up to $400,000 each to the individual candidates with lots more pumped in from outside, dark money. In 2018, the four women who turned the Senate from Republican to Democratic each ginned up more than $400,000 in their tight districts.

Two of those 2018 Democratic winners, Sens. Faith Winter and Jessie Danielson, are in safe districts now. Danielson has $2,294 in her funds on hand and Winter has $9,130. Winter’s registration in the new SD-25 has almost 10% separating the parties with Democrats in the lead. Danielson is in SD-22 with a seventeen-point spread in her favor.

The Dylan Roberts v. Matt Solomon race in the mountain resort communities of SD-8 shows the 2018 trend of big money to the Democrat and not so much to the Republican. The district has a two-point spread up for the GOP candidate Solomon. But the big money is on Roberts’ side at $19,000 for Solomon and $135,000 for Roberts. Roberts has the advantage as an incumbent representative from the Eagle-Vail area. The district stretches north from the Interstate-70 corridor to Winter Park to Steamboat. Roberts shouldn’t be too comfortable, however, as the district lost more Democratic voters to the Unaffiliated column than Republican voters.

So what’s going on in Colorado that so many voters are dissatisfied with the parties? Are Unaffiliateds tired of the Left v. Right arguments? Or are the parties not enough left or right to meet the political objectives of voters?

Do former Democrats, once the home for younger voters, want their party to move harder on climate change and issues such as social justice, homelessness, gun safety/control, access to health care, clean air and water, and public education?

Do former Republicans want their party to focus more on the economy, taxes, oil-and-gas regulation, and less business regulation than on pro-life and second amendment issues?

Democrats are going to lose young voters unless they get serious about implementing climate change and inclusive health-care policies. That means clamping down on the oil-and-gas industry while ensuring that the environmental bureaucracies of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and the Air Pollution Control Division do better at cleaning up air, water and land. Young former Democratic voters, now Unaffiliated, definitely want universal health care implemented.

Republicans are going to continue to lose suburban women if they don’t figure out some path toward women’s health choice and stopping the gun disasters that afflict the state.

As of 2022, neither party is performing to expectations of their former members. The 2022 election may be a tipping point in more ways than either party is ready to deal with.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.