Colorado Politics

One poll shows Bennet up by double digits over O’Dea, but another finds Colorado race neck-and-neck

New polling released Wednesday painted contrasting pictures of Colorado’s U.S. Senate race, with one poll showing Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet leading Republican challenger Joe O’Dea by double digits and another survey suggesting a much closer contest.

Democratic firm Public Policy Polling found Bennet leading O’Dea 46% to 35%, with Libertarian nominee Brian Peotter pulling 7% and 12% undecided among Colorado voters.

An internal poll conducted for the Republican Attorney Generals Association by GOP strategist David Sackett of the Tarrance Group showed Bennet leading O’Dea 48% to 47%, with 5% undecided. The firm doesn’t appear to have included third-party candidates in its survey.

Other publicly available polls conducted since June have shown Bennet in the lead by between 6 and 13 points. According to election and sports data site FiveThirtyEight, Bennet leads in recent polling by an average 8.6 percentage points, 47.7% to O’Dea’s 39.1%. The site’s election simulation model forecasts a Bennet win 90 out of 100 times.

PPP interviewed 782 voters on Aug. 30 and 31, pollsters said. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. A spokesman for PPP told Colorado Politics that the firm conducted the poll on its own, without a sponsoring organization.

The poll for RAGA was conducted Aug. 22-25 among 600 likely registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points, according to a report by The Washington Examiner, which is owned by the same media company as Colorado Politics.

The Colorado Republican Party released partial results from the GOP-funded poll to the news outlet but declined to make available details often considered crucial to determining a poll’s accuracy, including the sample composition or list of questions.

PPP, on the other hand, posted the results of its new Colorado U.S. Senate poll in its entirety on its website, including crosstabs.

Neither the Colorado GOP nor RAGA responded to requests from Colorado Politics for information about the poll.

The analysts at FiveThirtyEight give PPP an A- rating and assign a B+ grade to the Tarrance Group.

According to the PPP poll, 46% of voters approve of the job Bennet is doing and 37% disapprove. O’Dea, a construction company owner and first-time candidate, is rated favorably by 27% of respondents and unfavorably by 29%, with 44% having no opinion of him.

Bennet leads O’Dea 41% to 27% among unaffiliated voters in the PPP survey, with Peotter getting 11% support and 21% undecided.

In the RAGA poll, Bennet has 49% support among independents and O’Dea has 44% support, the Examiner reported.

The RAGA poll also found the race between Attorney General Phil Weiser and his Republican challenger, 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner tied at 44% apiece with 12% undecided.

The Colorado GOP declined to share the results from the poll in the gubernatorial race between Democratic incumbent Jared Polis and Republican Heidi Ganahl, The Examiner reported.

Colorado Republican U.S. Senate nominee Joe O’Dea, left, and Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet
(AP file photos)
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