Viewpoint: Pueblo County Colorado Extends Presidential Voting Streak to Five in a Row

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?? The voters of Pueblo County extended their streak of picking the presidential winner to five elections in a row, as they supported President-elect Trump for the second time in three elections. In Pueblo County, Trump collected 43,123 while Kamala Harris had 38,954.

?? The last presidential election Pueblo County got wrong was in 2000, and in 2004 when George W. Bush beat Al Gore and John Kerry.

?? Since then, we have been perfect at picking the winners: Obama, Obama, Trump, Biden, and then Trump. What happened to Trump in that middle election?

?? Statewide Harris had over 340,000 votes more than Trump. Trump did win 41 of the 64 counties in Colorado. Nationally, Trump flipped 54 counties across the U.S. from blue to red on his way to victory, according to data available. And gained support in areas of the country which had long been Democratic strongholds.

?? ?Trump ended up with 312 electoral votes and 74,916,518 popular votes. Harris had 226 electoral votes and 71,451,048 popular votes.

?? ?Republicans picked up four seats in the Senate and have a 53- 46 majority there.

?? ?With 17 votes still undecided, the Republicans have a 214-204 lead in the House of Representatives.

?? ?Pre-registration statistics for Pueblo County indicated 35,692 Pueblo voters registered as Democrats, 26,936 as Republicans and almost 49,938 as Independents. In case you want to do the math, that means that over 30,000 registered voters did not vote for the President of the United States in one county in one state. Imagine how many people didn’t care nationally.

?? I have mixed opinions about that. On one hand, if those people care that little, I’m glad they didn’t vote. On the other hand, the question echoes in my mind, why?

?? The state registration rolls have 1,008,847 Democrats, 1,030,503 Republicans, and 1,458, 196 un[1]affiliated. The election was supposed to be very close. It was a little bad déjà vu when I went to bed on election night and Trump led in all the swing states. In 2020, when he led when we all went to bed, he woke up behind. Not sure what the difference was this year. Maybe better security? I’m not sure.

?? Part of the reason it was hard to get a handle on who was going to win was the fact that the mainstream media was for Harris. In both of the Presidential Debates and the Vice-Presidential Debate, it was always three against one. The candidate and two moderators. Particularly interesting was the number of times the Republican was fact checked. A fact check really seems more like a propaganda weapon than a fact check when it is aimed exclusively at one side. Don’t you think?

?? ?I kept switching from network to network and the amount of depression grew by leaps and bounds. First thing Wednesday morning, it was very sad to see.

?? ?Being used to doing a little fact checking myself, there were times the Republicans were wrong or lying. Did the Democrat always tell the truth? Go replay the tapes and fact check it yourself. That would also be a “no”.

?? ?I question the value of the debates.

?? ?According to NPR, $10.5 billion has been spent on campaign ads (thru November 1), in the 2024 election cycle, on races from president down to county commissioner, according to data compiled by the ad-tracking firm AdImpact and analyzed by NPR. That total is up $1 billion from four years ago.

?? ?Democrats have outspent Re[1]publicans, $5 billion to $4.1 billion, from the beginning of the cycle, starting in January 2023. (Independent, third-party and nonpartisan groups account for the rest.)

?? ?Twenty-three states this cycle have seen more than $100 million spent. But one state tops them all: Pennsylvania. An astonishing $1.2 billion has been spent on ads in the state, the first time in U.S. history that a single state has seen more than $1 billion in ads.

?? ?Hopefully, the country gets its money’s worth.

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