Colorado Independents: Partisan Drift or Closed Primary Strategy?

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Unaffiliated-voter numbers in Colorado decline (By Kurtis Lee, The Denver Post) In August, active unaffiliated voters dropped to 29 percent, while Republicans rose to 37 percent and Democrats remained even at 33 percent.
• FROM THIS PAST FEBRUARY -- Bill rejected that would open Colorado primaries to unaffilliated voters (By Lynn Bartels, The Denver Post) Unaffiliated voters still will have to declare themselves a Republican or a Democrat to vote in a Colorado primary. A House committee Thursday killed a bill that would have allowed unaffiliated voters to vote in primaries without having to give up their unaffiliated status.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

INDEPENDENT VOTERS
Why 2008 will be a year for North Carolina Democrats (Citizen Times Asheville NC) 95,000 registered as Unaffiliated. Who are these people? We are told many are young and African Americans registering for the first time. It is a safe assumption many have registered to vote for Barack Obama.

CAMPAIGN
Demographic Groups Shift in Battleground Polls (Wall Street Journal/Washington Wire) Looking at changes across all four states, independent voters inspired the biggest shift. Obama saw a 26 percentage point loss from June to July, whereas McCain saw a 22 point gain.

LOCAL INDEPENDENT NEWS
POLITIGAB: 100 percent behind growth (THE GAZETTE Colorado Springs) Only Republicans or Democrats get to participate in the Aug. 12 primary election. That leaves out about 114,000 registered voters who are not affiliated with either party.