Boulder is not as politically polarized as you might think, election data show

Since 2013, no candidate for the Boulder City Council has won a seat without the endorsement of an unofficial candidate committee, according to city and county election records. 

These powerful committees pool funds and campaign in support of a group of candidates. They spend thousands of dollars on mailing pamphlets to voters, urging support for all their preferred candidates. 

This campaigning practice has divided candidates into two main “slates” in Boulder in recent years, much like political parties in state and federal elections. Notably, in this year’s City of Boulder elections, no candidate outside the two main slates came close to winning a city council or mayor seat.

Although being on a slate seems necessary to win, about half of City of Boulder voters cast their votes for candidates from both competing slates, despite the perceived opposition, according to an analysis of election results by Boulder Reporting Lab. 

The results suggest the local electorate may not be as polarized as committee politics make it seem.

Boulder Reporting Lab analyzed the “cast vote record” published late last month by the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder. The spreadsheet includes more than 118,000 anonymized ballots covering nearly every voter. It was published online for the first time this year, though earlier versions could be obtained through an open records request, according to county officials. 

We analyzed the results to see how often voters strictly followed the endorsement recommendations of the major candidate committees to help gauge their influence at the ballot box. While varying analysis methods can produce different outcomes, no matter how we approached the data, the main takeaway remained the same: More than half of voters did not vote down the ticket for either slate.

Two major committees were Boulder Elevated, a newly formed political organization that has made public safety one of its top issues, and PLAN-Boulder County, an organization that has long advocated for open space. Candidate committees for those organizations endorsed the slate of Bob Yates for mayor and Terri Brncic, Tina Marquis,  Tara Winer and Jennifer Robins for city council. 

On the other side was Boulder Progressives, a more left-leaning organization that has advocated for policies such as housing density. The organization’s unofficial candidate committee backed the slate of Aaron Brockett and Nicole Speer for mayor and Ryan Schuchard and Taishya Adams for city council. 

Many of these candidates were also endorsed by other political organizations and media outlets. But Boulder Progressives and Boulder Elevated spent the most money of all the unofficial candidate committees, according to city campaign finance reports. In the end, Brockett won the race for mayor and Winer, Marquis, Schuchard and Adams won seats on the Boulder City Council.

According to the analysis by Boulder Reporting Lab, approximately 19% of voters cast their ballots for the entire Boulder Elevated slate, exclusively voting for its candidates. 

And about 29% of voters cast their ballots for the entire Boulder Progressive’s slate of candidates. Because Boulder Progressives only endorsed two city council candidates, this percentage includes ballots where voters supported any of the other candidates, including those endorsed by Boulder Elevated or those who were not endorsed by either of the two committees: Silas Atkins, Waylon Lewis, Aaron Gabriel Neyer, and Jacques Decalo.

Two other unofficial candidate committees, meanwhile — Better Boulder and Sierra Club Indian Peaks — endorsed a different mix of candidates: Brockett for mayor and Adams, Schuchard, Winer and Lewis for city council. Less than 5% of voters voted for this exact slate of candidates. 

The ballots also show how voters voted on ballot measures. The Safe Zones 4 Kids ballot measure, which passed with about 61% support, makes tents and propane tanks near schools, sidewalks and multi-use paths “subject to prioritized removal.”

The measure was seen as a litmus test for a candidate’s stance on the broader issue of homeless encampments. Within the two main slates, candidates were either all for it or against it. But many voters held a more nuanced perspective. 

All the candidates who were endorsed by Boulder Progressives opposed the Safe Zones 4 Kids ballot measure. Even so, about 26% of voters who backed the Boulder Progressives’ slate of candidates also supported the Safe Zones 4 Kids ballot measure. By comparison, about 88% of voters who only supported the Boulder Elevated slate of candidates also voted for the Safe Zones 4 Kids measure. All the Boulder Elevated-endorsed candidates backed the measure. 

A version of the cast vote record is used to audit the election results by comparing it with the paper ballots. The record can also be used to see whether people are marking their ballots correctly or leaving certain contests blank. 

In the rankings for city mayor, some people only preferred one candidate or did not fill out their ballots correctly. 

More than 100 voters ranked Yates as their first, second, third and fourth pick. More than 5,600 voters put him as the first pick and left the rest blank. In both cases, the ballots were counted as a first-place pick for Yates. Dozens of voters marked multiple candidates for their first choice for mayor, resulting in their votes not being counted.

Separately, more than 2,600 City of Boulder ballots did not include a vote for any city council candidates. The fourth seat on the Boulder City Council was decided by 46 votes. 

Neal McBurnett, a retired computer scientist and independent consultant in election integrity, said the cast vote record can provide a better understanding of when voters are making errors or when their votes are not being counted. Sometimes this can come down to the design of the ballot or the rules for how votes are counted. 

“Those are some of the things that we can educate voters about, and maybe change the rules, to not disenfranchise people’s rankings,” McBurnett told Boulder Reporting Lab. 

Separately, the League of Women Voters of Boulder County published an analysis of the city council results. The analysis calculates each candidate’s votes as a percentage of the ballots, rather than the total number of votes. According to the League of Women Voters of Boulder County, this approach provides the public a better understanding of candidate support in multi-winner plurality contests. 

Among its findings was that Councilmember Winer, who was reelected with the most votes of any candidate, was also the only city council candidate who had the support of a majority of voters, according to the analysis. 

This is “the highest percentage any Boulder municipal candidate has received in at least the last six elections,” the report states.