Unaffiliated voters in El Paso County claim the majority
El Paso County unaffiliated voters have claimed the majority as of Monday evening, making up just over 50% of all active voters.
Frustrated residents are fleeing the major parties and a new state system is registering newcomers as independent, leading to the shift, experts said.
El Paso County resident Jonathan Liepe is among half of the 470,432 active voters in Colorado’s most populous county who consider themselves independent in a jurisdiction that has historically been a Republican stronghold.
While Liepe has been unaffiliated his entire life, he has been particularly frustrated by major party candidates for the last 10 years.
“Can we not find better candidates between either party? It is just a joke,” Liepe said as he dropped off his ballot Monday, ahead of Election Day. Across the country, Colorado and 15 other states will weigh in on presidential candidates on Super Tuesday.
Updated registered voter data provided by the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s Office as of Monday show unaffiliated voters make up 50.03% of all voters in the county — more than all Republican, Democratic and other minor party-affiliated voters combined.
“Our unaffiliated voters have a major impact on every single one of our elections,” Clerk and Recorder Steve Schleiker said. “… Our Republicans are losing about 0.2% (of voters) each week, and the same with Democrats — and they’re going unaffiliated.”
Among 458,314 active voters in the November 2020 General Election, independents made up 41% of the El Paso County electorate, clerk’s data from Nov. 25, 2020 show. During that year, about 36% of all El Paso County voters were Republican, and Democrats made up about 21% of all voters.
In November 2022, the numbers slipped, with Republicans accounting for about 32% and Democrats representing about 19%. Independents increased, accounting for about 47% of all voters.
As of Monday, Republicans had slipped again, down to about 30%, and Democrats down to 17.5%, data show.
Why are voters going unaffiliated?
Pundits and local officials say there are two reasons for this diaspora in El Paso County: General exasperation with the major Republican and Democratic parties and Colorado’s automatic voter registration system.
“I think people are just getting more and more sick of both parties. There just seems to be a general dislike,” said Eli Bremer, a former 2022 Republican U.S. Senate candidate and former chairman of the El Paso County GOP.
Schleiker said he’s recently heard from residents who have for decades been registered Democrats or Republicans and are now registering as independent because they don’t agree with partisan politics and “continued fighting within either party itself.”
“They feel that either party has left them,” he said.
The state’s automatic registration program, passed by the Colorado Legislature in 2019, has also helped bump up the number of unaffiliated voters in El Paso County.
The program automatically registers eligible voters as unaffiliated when they apply for or renew their driver’s license. Voters can choose later to decline the registration or affiliate with a political party. Colorado allows residents to register and declare political affiliations through Election Day.
Jax Armendariz Unzueta stands beside the “Everyone is Welcome” mural in honor of Colorado Springs’ Fannie Mae Duncan Monday, March 4, 2024, in the Knob Hill area of Colorado Springs. Armendariz Unzueta served nine months in 2019 as an officer for the El Paso County Democrats. (The Gazette, Christian Murdock)
El Paso County resident Jax Armendariz Unzueta said her dissatisfaction with the national political machine in the 2016 General Election, and her later experience in 2019 as the second vice chairwoman with the county Democratic Party, prompted her to unaffiliate from the party in 2019.
Armendariz Unzueta said during the leadup to the national Democratic presidential primaries in late July 2016, she felt the race between candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was already decided by the Democratic National Convention long before the race was officially called.
During her nine-month tenure as an elected party official with El Paso County Democrats in 2019, she said she experienced racial microaggressions and felt other party officers at the time dismissed her perspective as a young Latina/Chicana.
“I just didn’t feel like I had a place in the party at that point,” Armendariz Unzueta said of her decision register as an independent.
Since the 2020 elections she’s seen positive changes in the local Democratic party and feels it is now more inclusive and open to different perspectives. Though she continued voting for Democratic candidates in 2020 as an independent, she reaffiliated as a Democrat in 2022 and now works as a voter protection specialist with the local party.
“I reaffiliated and I wish I had done it earlier, to be frank,” Armendariz Unzueta said. “I do know, based on the statistics, I could have affected the process at the caucus level to have a better representative at the local level than I do now. That’s something we talk about as voting advocates: One or two votes can make the difference. I’ve seen it.”
How do unaffiliated voters shape local elections?
El Paso County Democrats Chairwoman Mischa Smith said her party is working to reach communities who may not have previously heard from the party.
“This has been a really exciting time to be a Democrat in El Paso County,” Smith said. “… We’re still making ground in helping turn El Paso County more progressive. … If anything, it’s working better in our favor, (having) people who are looking at both sides.”
Schleiker said political candidates can have a lot of influence if their message resonates with a broad swath of voters.
“The bottom line is, it actually comes down to a candidate — if that candidate is able to build a relationship, if their message is in line with a lot of the unaffiliated voters,” he said.
Bremer said independent voters often still lean left or right. Looking at voting trends by local district can provide insight on how they lean politically.
One drawback to registering as an independent is those voters have no say in which candidates make it onto the major party primary ballots, said Jody Richie, a longtime Republican volunteer and co-founder of Peak Republicans. The organization supports GOP candidates and elected officials in local races because the county GOP has seen internal strife.
However, independents can participate in the Republican and Democratic primary elections under a 2016 Colorado law.
Todd Watkins, vice chairman of the El Paso County GOP, said in a brief emailed statement last week the law “has had appreciable impacts on the party’s direction and has certainly changed how candidates manage their campaigns.” He did not address questions about courting more voters to register as Republicans.
The Colorado Republican Party filed a federal lawsuit in Denver on July 31, hoping to overturn the law. The party alleged it was unconstitutional and infringes on the GOP’s rights under the First and 14th amendments to choose nominees for the general election ballot.
A federal judge on Feb. 2 declined the party’s request to block unaffiliated voters from participating in its primary elections, concluding the GOP did not show how the law’s passage nearly eight years ago measurably affected Republican nominating contests in the years since.
Richie said the Peak Republicans group is focused on petitioning its candidates onto the June primary ballot. The drop in registered Republicans makes that harder, she said.
El Paso County could elect more Democrats
El Paso County has long been known as a Republican stronghold, though it is slowly moving away from that direction as Colorado turns more blue.
For example, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis lost to Republican nominee Heidi Ganahl in the November 2022 election by only four percentage points in El Paso County, a marked shift from the 20-point margins Republican statewide candidates previously garnered in the county. That year, Polis barely edged out Ganahl within Colorado Springs city limits.
El Paso County voters this November will select three representatives to fill seats in Districts 2, 3 and 4 on the Board of County Commissioners. As of Monday afternoon, two Democrats — Naomi Lopez in District 3 and Detra Duncan in District 4 — are running for those seats and Luis Ybarra is running as an unaffiliated candidate in District 4. All 11 other candidates across all three districts are Republicans.
After redistricting last year changed commissioner district boundaries, District 3 is the most competitive seat of the three this fall.
It is possible El Paso County could elect its first Democratic candidate to the county commission in almost 50 years, Bremer said. But November’s election will depend on several dynamics, including the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential primary. It’s still too early to predict, he said.
“The top of the ticket is going to matter,” he said. “By the numbers, you see the potential for some movement.”
The Gazette’s Mary Shinn contributed to this report.
Jax Armendariz Unzueta stands beside the “Everyone is Welcome” mural in honor of Colorado Springs’ Fannie Mae Duncan Monday, March 4, 2024, in the Knob Hill area of Colorado Springs. Armendariz Unzueta served nine months in 2019 as an officer for the El Paso County Democrats. (The Gazette, Christian Murdock)