COLORADO, USA — We are starting to learn more about who voted in the midterm election in Colorado.
More than 2.4 million ballots have been turned in to ballot boxes across Colorado, according to voter data released by the Secretary of State Wednesday morning. This data is updated as of 11:59 p.m. Tuesday. It is not fully complete and will be updated on Thursday and Monday.
9Wants to Know found that 64% of the state’s 3.8 million active voters have returned ballots.
So far, 73% of 946,771 Republican active voters have returned ballots, 69% of 1.07 million Democratic active voters have returned ballots and 56% of unaffiliated voters have returned ballots.
At 1.7 million active voters, unaffiliated voters are the largest voting bloc in the state. We will not know how they voted, according to SOS spokesperson Jack Todd.
"That is not something we can know during a General Election," he wrote in an email. "Every voter’s right to a secret ballot is constitutionally protected in Colorado. In Primary elections we know if unaffiliated voters voted the Democrat or Republican ballot but, in the General we have no way of knowing."
Graphic created by Zack Newman.
Of the registered Democratic voters who returned ballots, 60% were women. The largest group of Democrats to vote so far was women ages 55 to 74. More than 1 in 5 Democrats who voted -- or 160,755 voters -- were in that demographic.
For registered Republicans, men and women aged 55-64 were more likely to vote. So far, 158,423 voters in that category participated. That is 23% of 687,433 GOP voters. So far, 52% of Republican voters who returned a ballot were men.
The largest subsection of unaffiliated voters were also men, but younger -- 96,214 voters were men ages 35 to 44. That is approximately 10% of 983,477 unaffiliated voters who returned a ballot.
The Secretary of State keeps voter data on demographics like age and gender.
9Wants to Know found 51% of the returned ballots were from women. The gender and age group that participated the most thus far was women 55-64, with 234,568 ballots.
According to Pew Research, anyone born between 1981 and 1996 is considered a Millennial, and “anyone born from 1997 onward is part of a new generation.” The SOS data groups voter ages in a way that makes it impossible to identify how many 25-year-olds voted, so it is difficult to make conclusions about how many Gen Z voters have participated so far.
But voters under 25 years old only accounted for 6% of all returned ballots.
Mail-in voting was by far the most popular option used by Coloradans so far. As of late Tuesday night, 95% of returned ballots had come by mail. Unaffiliated, Republican and Democrat voters all voted by mail at least 94% of the time.
Reach investigative reporter Zack Newman through his phone at 303-548-9044. You can also call or text securely on Signal through that same number. Email: zack.newman@9news.com. Call or text is preferred over email.
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