Poll: GOP gains ground for Colorado senator, governor

In Colorado's crucial Senate race, Republican challenger Cory Gardner now leads Democratic Sen. Mark Udall by 46%-39%, a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll finds, a troubling finding for Democrats scrambling to hold control of the Senate.

In the Rocky Mountain governor's race, the GOP challenger also has gained ground over the past month. While Republican Bob Beauprez trailed Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper by 2 percentage points in September, he now leads the governor by 2 points — movement in his direction, although the race is still well within the survey's 4.4-point margin of error.

The bigger change has come in the hard-fought Senate race, which was essentially tied five weeks ago when Udall held a 1-point lead in the USA TODAY/Suffolk survey. Now he trails by 7 points amid a backlash from voters who say he has waged a more negative campaign than his opponent.

The race is important because Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina have Democratic-held seats that are at the center of the battle over which party will control the Senate in January. Republicans, who are likely to keep control of the House, need to score a net gain of six seats to claim a majority in the Senate as well.

The findings in the state, which President Obama carried in 2008 and 2012, signal an electorate that seems to be tipping toward the GOP. The poll of 500 likely voters, taken Saturday through Tuesday, comes as voting centers opened this week in Colorado and thousands of the state's distinctive mail-in ballots have been cast.

Those surveyed now support the Republican candidate for Congress in their district over the Democrat by 51%-39%, doubling the GOP's advantage in September on the so-called generic congressional ballot and well outside the poll's margin of error.

"I'm thinking we need a big change and to stir things up," says Shawn Cadden, 57, a surgical technician from Grand Junction, Colo., who was among those surveyed. In a follow-up interview, he says he plans to vote for Gardner because he's against Udall. "He's a career politician," he scoffs, who has supported Obama "the whole time."

Cadden says Hickenlooper "hasn't done that bad a job" but probably will cast his ballot for Beauprez for governor because "we need a change all the way through."

Blana Clubine, 55, of Denver, says she'll back Udall, in part because of Gardner's position on issues of particular importance to women. Democrats have hammered him for his past support of "personhood" measures that would curtail abortion rights by defining fetuses as people. Now, he calls that a mistake and has announced support for selling oral contraceptives without a prescription.

Clubine isn't convinced. "It's a little late that Cory Gardner is coming on and saying ... 'Women can have rights.' "

The flood of TV ads in Colorado, sponsored by the campaigns and outside advocacy groups, clearly have had an impact. In the past five weeks, Udall's unfavorable rating has jumped by 10 points; his favorable rating has dipped by 2.

Negative views of Gardner have risen by 4 points, but so have positive views of him. That leaves the challenger with a favorable-unfavorable rating of 45%-41% while Udall's rating is significantly under water, at 41%-54%.

Udall is blamed for running a more negative campaign, 46%-29%.

Among the small group of voters who already have cast their ballots, Gardner leads 50%-42%. While partisans have fallen in line — Udall is backed by 81% of Democrats and Gardner by 84% of Republicans — Gardner has pulled ahead among independents, 44%-31%. And he has erased the gender gap from September's survey; women are now as likely to support him as men are.

The Republican tilt in the poll doesn't mean voters want to elect candidates who necessarily will vote with the GOP on issues.

"Coloradans have had it with party politics," says David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, in Boston. "For weeks, both candidates' ads have focused on messaging declaring that the other has or will vote his party line in Washington DC at the expense of constituents' interests. The resulting impact is dramatic."

An overwhelming 85% say senators shouldn't vote along party lines; just 8% say they should vote the way their party votes. By nearly 3-1, 57%-20%, they say a senator who votes half-Democratic and half-Republican on issues is better than one who consistently supports his or her party.

"Colorado has had it with partying," Paleologos says.

The spate of negative ads has left John Griffin, 37, a contractor from Colorado Springs, unsure of just how to vote. "I hear everybody talking stuff around me," he says. "Somehow it feels like this is how politics is any more: You try to vote for the lesser of two evils and hope everything goes all right."