Aurora’s municipal election is less than a month away, so let’s take a look at the breakdown of the electorate.
Officially, Aurora’s city elections are nonpartisan, but that has not stopped partisan politics from influencing city policy. As it currently stands, conservatives hold a supermajority on Aurora City Council, but all that could change with half of the council seats up this year.
CTR examined publicly available voter data to determine the party registration of Aurora voters, both citywide and within each of its city council wards, with the goal of quantifying the city’s partisan breakdown.
Aurora is unique among Colorado’s large cities in that its municipal boundaries covers three counties: Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas. This means its state and federal elections, where voters’ party affiliation is tracked for participation in primaries, are administered by three separate county clerks.
The most recent city council election data for Aurora shows 252,453 people registered to vote. A zoomed-in look at the numbers show that there are 131,379 unaffiliated voters, 78,411 registered Democrats, 39,881 registered Republicans, and 2781 voters registered to minor parties.
By those numbers, Republicans are in a clear minority, but what about that pool of unaffiliated voters? Looking at state and federal elections, those unaffiliated voters break at a pretty high margin for more liberal candidates, as Aurora is entirely represented in the State legislature and Congress by Democrats. This is especially true for both Adams and Arapahoe County where the bulk of Aurora’s population lies.
What defines Aurora’s municipal elections is its lack of voter turnout.
Take the mayoral election in 2023, for example. Only 79,644 voters turned out to vote for that race- barely over 30% of total registered voters in Aurora. It was even less in 2021. Looking at the individual wards, Aurora Ward I saw roughly 18% voter turnout, a little of over 22% for Ward II, and close to 23% for Ward III.
Voting experts have noted Aurora’s low turnout as part of a national trend of lower turnout in municipal elections across America. One recent study from the University of California San Diego found that Aurora’s mayoral race turnout was only 30.2% compared to 78% in presidential elections.
Election experts say that low voter turnout is unsurprising considering the circumstances of Aurora’s city elections.
Dr. Seth Masket researches political science at the University of Denver said that off-year election cycles are notorious for their low voter turnout.
“There’s a lot of research on how having an odd year city election means lower turnout,” said Masket. “Especially compared to having elections simultaneously with congressional or presidential elections. Recent studies out of UC Berkeley found that it can be up to thirty percentage points lower when it’s an odd-year election. The people who will show up in lower turnout elections tend to completely dominate those cycles. Typically, those are people who are closely tied to the stakes of the election, that includes a lot of organized groups like firefighter groups, police groups, teachers, etc. Those tend to have a much greater influence in those odd-year elections.”
Masket said that city elections being officially non-partisan can also contribute to lower turnout.
“Another thing that can have an effect on turnout that we’ve seen from some cities is to do partisan city elections,” Masket said. “There aren’t a ton of cities that do that and, in a lot of cities, it’s pretty obvious who the Democrats and the Republicans are anyway, but when the candidates are running on a party ticket, that tends to increase voter turnout. A lot of voters may not closely follow politics, they don’t really know or care to learn what the candidates stand for. Having that party affiliation is a quick way to convey where a candidate leans and gives voters a lot of information.”
Still, Masket said that the biggest factor that likely contributes to Aurora’s dismal voter turnout is that the city’s municipal elections take place on odd-year election cycles.
Other local elected officials have commented on this trend in local politics.
State Sen. Mike Weissman (D-Aurora) has represented Aurora in the state legislature since 2017.
“Voter turnout tends to be higher in even number years and tends to be even higher in presidential election years,” Weissman said. “Elections, like Aurora’s municipal elections and most other municipalities in Colorado, that fall on odd-years we tend to see a divergence. If you look at Aurora and what our voters tend to choose to represent them in the State Capitol and in Congress, it’s heavily Democratic. Jason Crow, for example, has earned some strong victories in the 6th Congressional District which is anchored in our city.”
According to Weissman, their are compounding factors that contribute to lower turnout in the city.
“It is certainly the case that fewer people choose to participate in an odd-numbered year compared to an even-numbered year,” Weissman explained. “That is compounded by the economic disparities that exist in our city. We know that particularly far north and west in Aurora, folks can really struggle economically and when a household is working three or four jobs between two people, it’s harder to be politically involved on the off-year.”
Weissman said that a lot of the typical ways voters engage with candidates, going to events or participating in phone banks, are harder to attend if you are juggling multiple jobs.
While voter turnout in Aurora is low, there are changes that can be made to change that. If Aurora voters put forward a ballot initiative, they could change Aurora elections to coincide with a congressional cycle.
Boulder voters overwhelmingly passed just such an initiative in 2022. Their first even-year election will take place in 2026. Even-year elections are rare at the municipal level in Colorado, but not unheard of. According to the Colorado Municipal League, 30 cities and towns held regularly scheduled elections last November. Three towns, DeBeque, Fraser, and Oak Creek, held special elections to make the switch to even-year elections. Like Boulder, Fraser will change over next year.
