Boston apuesta fuerte por Colorado

(Foto: AP)

Más allá de los tres grandes estados competitivos (Florida, Ohio y Virginia), Boston está apostando fuerte por Colorado, que con sus 9 votos electorales y su historial republicano ofrece la opción más rápida para completar la ruta hasta los 270 votos electorales necesarios.

The New York Times:

In an office park with clipped lawns and burbling fountains, volunteers at Mitt Romney’s new Colorado headquarters were busy working the phones. Do you approve of President Obama, they asked voters. Are you voting Democratic or Republican? Every time they tallied a new Romney supporter, they dinged a bell.

The campaign cannot ding fast enough. With Colorado as narrowly divided and fiercely contested as any battleground state in the country, its fate this November may well depend on whether Mr. Romney’s campaign can build a ground-level presence like the one that helped carry Mr. Obama four years ago.

They are starting from behind. Mr. Obama already has 32 field offices scattered across Colorado, from the dense Denver suburbs to smaller cities on the edges of the mountains and plains. Mr. Romney’s campaign has just 10, many of them paired with local Republican Party offices. The campaign’s state headquarters has been formally open since only mid-June.

But as Republicans outpace Democrats in fund-raising, they say have doubled their national footprint over the past month. The Romney campaign is looking to chip away at Mr. Obama’s vaunted organizational advantage on the ground, as Republican-financed political groups blast the airwaves.

“They are the reigning champs,” said Rich Beeson, Mr. Romney’s political director. “They learned from us in 2004. We learned from them in 2008.”

(...) Republicans say they have 250 “victory offices” nationwide, with four more in the pipeline for Colorado, including one in the liberal college town of Boulder. Mr. Romney’s advisers say they have no plans to try to match Mr. Obama office for office and staff member for staff member, but they say that will not prevent them from covering places like Colorado with volunteers to make phone calls and ring doorbells.

“Colorado could very well be the state that decides the presidency,” said James Garcia, Mr. Romney’s state director here. “We have activity across the state. We’re leaving no stone unturned.”

¿Por qué razón apuestan más por Colorado que por Nevada u otros pequeños estados?

They see a sign of renewed enthusiasm in Republican voter registration, which stands at 1.12 million, compared with 1.09 million registered Democrats.

Hay más republicanos que demócratas registrados en Colorado. Si a eso se suma una mayor motivación republicana que se traduzca en la asistencia de más republicanos que demócratas a las urnas, les bastaría con conseguir la mitad del voto independiente, que en una elección igualada se espera esté dividido, para ganar el estado.

Situación similar se repite en Iowa, donde los republicanos cuentan con una ventaja de unos 21,000 votantes registrados. La única vez anterior en muchos años que el GOP tuvo ventaja en votantes registrados en Iowa, en 2004 (una ventaja de unos 4,000 votantes), Bush se llevó el estado en una elección igualada.

Sin embargo, en Nevada los demócratas conservan su ventaja en el registro de votantes. Así que esperad allí un esfuerzo mucho menor por parte de Boston. Concentrará sus energías en FL, OH, VA, NC, IA, CO y NH (siendo los cuatro primeros estados de victoria obligada, y necesitando ganar solo uno de los otros tres).