From Purple to Blue: The Political Realignment of Colorado from 1992 to 2023

Abstract

National realignment theory has been rightly criticized for failing to provide illuminative power in identifying critical elections as they unfold and predicting future political realignment. While this theory has been most often applied to national realignments, recent scholars have found it useful to study realignments at the subnational level. In this thesis I seek to, through the lenses of issue ownership and saliency theories, use Colorado as a case study of a political realignment at the subnational level to address these concerns by examining the relationship between critical elections, direct democracy, substantial public policies, and electoral gains. By understanding how policies approved by the electorate grant electoral gains to parties that own the political issues associated with such policies, I argue that a state’s political realignment may be potentially identified and predicted through observing policy changes by the electorate that lead to electoral gains. Through the employment of descriptive analysis, my methodological approach is predicated on electoral returns, ballot measure data, county level data, data on electoral gains, and repeated cross-sectional public opinion data. My investigation and research resulted in finding that substantial public policy—approved by the electorate of a state via direct democracy at the ballot box—in a critical election can result in electoral gains that aid in a state’s political realignment. My findings may have broader implications pertaining to the interconnectedness between ballot measures, direct democracy, public policies, critical elections, and the overall political realignment of a state.