EL PASO COUNTY — The nation is still incredibly polarized along party lines, but a huge chunk of voters are deciding to register as unaffiliated in Colorado. News5 spoke to a political science educator with who says in the last decade, the number of these voters hit all-time highs.
4,576 registered Republicans changed their party affiliation in Colorado, in the week following the insurrection at the U.S. capitol. That's according to an analysis of voter registration data done by our sister station in Denver. The numbers analyzed were provided by the Colorado Secretary of State's office. More than 4,100 of those Republicans – or 90 percent -- changed to unaffiliated. In this same time frame, 441 Republicans in Larimer County, 348 in Weld County, and 5 Republicans in El Paso County changed their party affiliation to something else.
Mr. Robert Duensing, a political science educator with District 11, says some people could be be rejecting politics altogether while others may be leaving their party because of the direction its going. He also says there's more commonality among us than you think.
"Most of us are in the middle and maybe that's why the unaffiliated voter has grown to over 40 percent, and has now outpaced Republicans and Democrats across the country," Duensing explained. "Even in El Paso County unaffiliated voters outpace the Republican party and the Democratic party."
Statewide, 266 democrats left the party. Of those, 243 became unaffiliated, while 17 joined the Republican party. For more info, click here.
