Welcome back. It's incredibly good to have you
with us again today. Yeah, it's great to be here.
Whether you are prepping for a meeting or catching
up on your field or, you know, you're just one
of those naturally curious people who loves pulling
on a thread to see what unravels, you are in
the right place. Absolutely. We are taking you
on another deep dive today, and the source material
we're looking at is, well, it's one of those
unexpected gold mines of information. It really
is, because when you first glance at it, it just
looks like a standard reference document. Right.
But once you start looking at the proportions
and the actual timelines, a very human narrative
starts to emerge from the data. Today, our mission
is to unpack a Wikipedia article detailing the
list of United States Senate elections in Colorado.
Now, I know. It sounds dry. It really does. A
massive chronological list of dates, candidate
names, and voter turnout numbers spanning from
the 1870s all the way to the 2020s sounds like
a dusty spreadsheet. A very long spreadsheet.
Exactly. Yeah. You might be wondering how an
encyclopedia table translates into an engaging
story. OK, let's unpack this, because hidden
within these raw data points is a gripping century
long record of razor thin margins, massive population
booms and some truly wild political anomalies.
And what I love about looking at a raw historical
ledger like this is that it completely strips
away the political noise. Yeah, the bias is gone.
Right. We aren't here to debate the merits of
the Democrats or the Republicans or the various
third parties that pop up. We are just looking
at the pure math of democracy and what those
vote counts tell us about the electorate at that
specific time. We're just data detectives. Exactly.
The data acts as a neutral mirror reflecting
the priorities of the voters. We're totally impartial
here. We are just following the numbers. So to
get started, let's establish a quick baseline
with the mechanics of the Senate as laid out
in the text. Good idea. We all know that every
state is allotted two U .S. senators. But the
key structural element that shapes this entire
data set is that Senate terms are staggered.
They serve six -year terms, but those terms are
broken up into classes. And because Senate terms
are staggered into those classes, this data set
isn't just a single timeline. It is effectively
two parallel tracks of Colorado history running
side by side. That's a great way to put it. When
Colorado was officially admitted to the union
back in 1876, the state was assigned a class
two seat and a class three seat. Right, right.
The purpose of this system, obviously, is to
ensure that only a third of the entire U .S.
Senate is up for election every two years. It
prevents total turnover. So when we look at this
list, we're really tracking the evolution of
class two and class three completely independently.
But the way those early seats were filled. It
looks completely foreign compared to modern elections.
There is a massive pivot point in our source
material right at the year 1913. Oh, yeah. The
17th Amendment. Before 1913, you don't see massive
popular vote totals in the tables because the
state legislatures were the ones actually choosing
the senators behind closed doors. Then 17th Amendment
passes. And everything changes. Practically overnight,
the system shifts to direct election by the voters.
What's fascinating here is how fundamentally
that constitutional amendment changes the very
nature of the data we are reading. Totally. Prior
to 1913, a list of senators is essentially a
record of political consensus among state level
power brokers. You're looking at backroom deals
and legislative majority established. But the
moment you cross that 1913 threshold, the entire
nature of the ledger transforms. These tables
and percentages become a direct reflection of
the public will. It completely democratizes the
spreadsheet. Just imagine being a citizen right
at that transition point. You're living in Colorado
and suddenly you have direct, tangible power
over a massive federal choice. That's a huge
shift. And that shift in power leads directly
into the actual voter data. And man, did the
voters of Colorado make some of these early direct
elections incredibly close. The razor -thin margins
are where the statistics really start to show
the tension of the era. When you transition to
a popular vote, you suddenly introduce the reality
that a tiny fraction of the population can literally
dictate the direction of the entire state. I
really want to look closely at the tightest races
we found in this list, because focusing on the
raw numbers grounds the history. Let's pull up
the Class III special election in 1932. Oh, the
Schuyler and Walker race. Yes. You have Carl
C. Schuyler, the Republican candidate, and Walter
Walker, the Democratic candidate. When the dust
settles, Schuyler beats Walker by exactly 1 ,065
votes out of over 414 ,000 total votes cast.
That is a margin of about one quarter of one
percent. A quarter of a percent. A U .S. Senate
seat was decided by barely 1 ,000 votes. Think
about the logistics of that. That is the size
of a single neighborhood deciding the federal
representation for the entire state. It really
is. A single rainy day in one specific county
or a localized issue with a polling place somewhere
could have easily flipped the U .S. Senate. It
forces you to reevaluate how we view historical
mandates. When we look back, we tend to think
of election winners as having a broad consensus
of the people backing them. Right. Like the whole
state was on board. Exactly. But this data proves
that often there is no broad consensus. There's
just a fractured electorate where one side managed
to find a tiny handful of extra supporters. Yeah.
And that 1932 race wasn't a one -off anomaly.
The text shows several of these absolute squeakers
throughout the century. You see it again a decade
later. You do. Take the 1942 Class II race. Democrat
Edwin C. Johnson goes up against Republican Ralph
Lawrence Carr. Johnson edges him out with roughly
50 .2 % of the vote compared to Carr's 49 .2%.
Wow. It was a difference of just a few thousand
votes. Or you can skip ahead to the 1972 Class
II upset. Oh, that's a good one. The Democrat
Floyd Haskell narrowly defeats the incumbent
Republican. Gordon Allott. Haskell pulls in about
49 .4 % to Allott's 48 .3%. Barely 1%. Exactly.
Haskell unseated a sitting senator, a guy who
had been there for three terms, by a margin of
just over 1%. When you lay those numbers out,
it really dismantles the idea that incumbency
makes a politician bulletproof. A 1 % margin
against a three -term incumbent means the challenger
essentially chipped away at the foundation until
the whole building collapsed. It raises an important
question, though. Why does this granular level
of data from 1932 or 1972 matter to us today?
In our modern world, we're constantly dealing
with information overload and political fatigue.
it is incredibly easy to feel like individual
actions are just a drop in the ocean very true
but these historical ledgers prove mathematically
that a handful of engaged citizens genuinely
tip the scales of history the data shows that
the margin of error in a functioning democracy
is often shockingly small It makes you wonder
how many people stayed home in 1932 thinking
their vote wouldn't change anything, completely
unaware that a thousand extra people could have
changed the course of the election. Precisely.
And speaking of data that challenges our assumptions,
here's where it gets really interesting. Let's
talk about the anomaly I found in the Class 3
data, because it might be the most fascinating
narrative in the entire article. The Ben Nighthorse
Campbell era in the 1990s. Yes. Let's look at
the timeline here. In 1992, Ben Nighthorse Campbell
runs for the Class 3 Senate seat representing
the Democratic Party. He wins a solid victory,
capturing nearly 52 percent of the vote and beating
the Republican challenger, Terry Considine. Campbell
goes to Washington as a Democratic senator. That
is a standard entry for the ledger, a solid single
digit margin victory for a major party. Standard,
right. But then follow that class three seat
to the very next election cycle in 1998. Ben
Nighthorse Campbell is up for reelection and
he wins again. Right. But he doesn't win as a
Democrat. He wins as a Republican. He runs against
Democrat Dottie Lamb. And Campbell absolutely
crushes it under a completely different party
banner. If you pause and just look at what that
implies about the voting public, it is a remarkable
piece of data. We don't need the outside historical
context or the political backstory of why he
switched to see the story here. No, the numbers
say it all. The raw numbers tell us everything
we need to know about candidate charisma versus
party infrastructure. Oh, wait. If Campbell won
as a Democrat in 92 and then dominated as a Republican
in 98, does the data show his total voter base
growing? Or did he just swap one half of the
state's voters for the other? That's the fascinating
part. When he ran as a Democrat, he won just
over 800 ,000 votes. When he ran as a Republican
six years later, he won nearly 830 ,000 votes,
beating Lamb 62 .5 percent to 35 percent. So
it went up. Yes. His total vote count actually
increased and his margin of victory exploded.
This suggests that a massive chunk of the Colorado
electorate was voting for the person, not the
party. That completely upends the conventional
wisdom that voters just blindly check the box
for their preferred party. To win 52 percent
as a Democrat and then 62 percent as a Republican
means that hundreds of thousands of voters looked
at his name, saw a different letter next to it
and said, yeah, I'm still voting for him. Exactly.
It shows a unique personal relationship between
a specific candidate and the voters that totally
transcends the party line. It also highlights
how fluid political coalitions can be. Voters
aren't monoliths. And we see that fluidity even
more clearly when we look beyond the two major
parties. The third parties. Yes. When margins
are as tight as that 1932 race we discussed,
third party candidates stop being statistical
footnotes and start acting as kingmakers. The
third parties in this text are incredible barometers
for what was going on in the country. Let's go
all the way back to the 1914 class three race.
This is right after the 17th Amendment. So the
voters are newly empowered. It was a close race
between the Democrat. Charles S. Thomas and the
Republican Hubert work. Thomas won with about
40 percent of the vote. But look at the others
column. A progressive candidate named Benjamin
Griffith took nearly 11 percent of the vote.
And a socialist candidate named J .C. Griffiths
took over 5 .5 percent. Two third party candidates
pulling over 16 percent of the total electorate.
Right. Benjamin Griffith and J .C. Griffiths.
Practically the same last name, running for two
completely different alternative parties, and
together siphoning off a massive chunk of the
voting base from the establishment candidates.
It's incredible. And you see a similar disruption
a decade later in 1924. This Farmer Labor Party
suddenly appears in the data. In the regular
Class 2 election, their candidate, Morton Alexander,
pulls about 5 % of the vote. In the special Class
3 election that same year, their candidate, Charles
T. Phillip, pulls over 5 .5%. What is crucial
to understand about these alternative party spikes
is that they represent shifting cultural and
economic priorities. A spreadsheet can't tell
you the emotional state of the voters, but it
can show you where they are directing their frustration.
Yeah, where the pressure is building. Exactly.
When you see a progressive and a socialist capturing
double digit percentages in 1914 or a farmer
labor party establishing a solid baseline across
multiple races in 1924, you are seeing the voters
explicitly voicing their demands. They are essentially
telling the major parties, neither of you are
addressing our needs. So we are going to park
our votes over here until you figure it out.
Exactly. The data captures the mood of the era.
It shows that the electorate was deeply concerned
with labor rights, agricultural policy and progressive
reform during those decades, even if those third
party candidates didn't actually win the seat.
So what does this all mean when we zoom out and
look at the entire century as a single continuous
timeline? Because for me, as I was reading through
this list, the most shocking thing wasn't the
1 ,000 vote margins or the party switching. What
was it? It was the sheer, unbelievable scale
of the numbers as time marched forward. Ah, yes.
The tides of turnout. The demographic footprint
of the state changes entirely. Let's compare
the total vote counts from those early 1900s
races to modern times because it illustrates
a fundamentally different logistical reality.
Going back to that 1914 Class 3 election with
the progressives and the socialists, if you add
up every single vote cast across all the parties,
you have roughly 250 ,000 total votes in the
entire state of Colorado. A quarter of a million
people participating in the Democratic process.
Now, hold that number in your head and fast forward
to the 2020 Class 2 election. You have Democrat
John Hickenlooper running against Republican
Cory Gardner. Hickenlooper pulls in over 1 .7
million votes. Wow. Gardner gets over. 1 .4 million
votes. Yeah. If you combine that with the other
candidates, you were looking at over 3 .2 million
combined votes cast in a single Senate race.
If we connect this to the bigger picture, this
Wikipedia list isn't just a record of political
winners and losers. It is a mathematical timeline
of Colorado's population explosion. You can literally
trace the state's growth decade by decade just
by tracking the rising tide of total ballots
cast. Think about what that means for the candidates
themselves. In 1914, a candidate only needed
to reach and persuade about 100 ,000 people to
win a Senate seat. You could theoretically travel
by train, stop in the major towns, shake enough
hands, and build a coalition. That was the playbook.
But by 2020, you were trying to communicate with
over 3 million voters spread across booming metropolitan
areas and vast rural counties. The logistical
nightmare of campaigning at that scale is hard
to comprehend. The scale of the electorate entirely
changes the mechanics of how a politician builds
a mandate. And as that population grows into
the millions, we also see fascinating patterns
in the ebb and flow of power. The data reveals
a constant tension between the advantage of incumbency
and the volatility of the electorate. You definitely
see long streaks of stability where incumbent
seem locked in. Gordon Allott is a great example
in the Class 2 seat. He wins his first term in
1954, successfully defends it in 1960, and defends
it again in 1966. He was a fixture. He secures
three solid terms before that narrow defeat in
1972. Or look at Michael Bennett in the Class
3 seat in more recent history. He wins in 2010,
defends in 2016, and defends again in 2022. The
incumbency advantage is real. Voters often prefer
the familiar name or at least the stability that
comes with a known quantity. But the data also
provides a sharp counter -narrative. Just when
a party seems to have established a dynasty,
the pendulum swings violently in the other direction.
The recent Class 2 data is the perfect case study
for that pendulum swing. Let's trace the last
few cycles. In 2008, Democrat Mark Udall wins
the seat against Bob Schaefer. Udall gets over
1 .2 million votes. So Udall goes to Washington
and becomes the incumbent heading into the 2014
election. Right. But in 2014, the pendulum swings.
Republican Cory Gardner unseats Udall, winning
by roughly a 2 % margin. A highly competitive
race that unseats an incumbent in a rapidly growing
state. Highly competitive. So now Gardner is
the incumbent heading into 2020. He has the advantage
of the office. But what happens? He swings again.
The pendulum swings right back. Democrat John
Hickenlooper unseats the incumbent Cory Gardner
in 2020 by a margin of about 53 .5 percent to
44 percent. It is this constant shifting battleground.
Just when you think a party has a lock on a specific
seat, the voters decide to completely change
course. It perfectly illustrates the accountability
built into the staggered six year term system
we discussed at the very beginning. Every six
years. The incumbent has to return to that ever
-changing, rapidly expanding population of 3
million people and ask for their mandate again.
And as the back and forth between Udall, Gardner,
and Hickenlooper clearly shows, that mandate
is never guaranteed, the electorate is fickle,
and their priorities are constantly evolving.
We have covered some serious ground today. Who
knew a chronological table of election results
could map out so much human behavior? It is a
testament to the fact that data is never just
numbers. It is a codified record of choices made
by millions of individuals over a century. Thank
you so much for going on this statistical journey
with us today. We started with what seemed like
a standard reference list, but by unpacking the
proportions and the context, we found incredible
stories. So many stories. We looked at extreme
nail biters decided by a fraction of a percent,
explored the fascinating candidate first loyalty
of Ben Nighthorse Campbell winning under two
different party banners, and traced a massive
demographic explosion from a quarter of a million
voters to over three million. And before we wrap
up this deep dive, I want to leave you with one
final thought to mull over. As we explored this
data today, we naturally focused heavily on the
past, the margins of 1932, the third -party disruptions
of 1914, the massive modern turnout of 2020.
Right, the history. But the Wikipedia text explicitly
notes something else at the very end of its tables.
It states that the next scheduled elections for
these Colorado seats are in 2026 for Class 2
and 2028 for Class 3. The ledger is still open.
That is exactly it. I want you to consider that
this historical table we've been analyzing isn't
a finished artifact. It is a living, breathing
document. Every single time a citizen casts a
vote in 2026 or 2028, they aren't just performing
a civic duty in the present moment. They're literally
adding a digit to a permanent historical ledger.
We've spent our time today marveling at the collective
decisions made by voters 100 years ago. It leaves
you to ponder, what will the data generated in
2026 and 2028 eventually say about our current
cultural mood to a curious reader looking back
at this exact same list a century from now. What
a fantastic thought to end on. You are writing
the next row of the spreadsheet with every ballot.
Thank you all for joining us on this deep dive.
Stay curious, keep pulling on those threads,
and we will catch you on the next one.