Yet Another Poll Finds Beauprez Down Double Digits

The Denver Post notes that Bob Beauprez's deficit may cause the campaign to get ugly--apparently they haven't been paying attention so far:

Democrat Bill Ritter leads Republican Bob Beauprez for governor by 15 percentage points, according to a new poll.

Ritter is beating Beauprez in every region of the state, including Beauprez's own congressional district and Republican strongholds like the Western Slope and Colorado Springs.

The poll, conducted for The Denver Post by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, shows Ritter leading Beauprez 50 percent to 35 percent. The former Denver district attorney has siphoned Republicans from Beauprez and has collected the majority of unaffiliated voters.

It also shows Beauprez's unfavorable rating at 40 percent, 8 percentage points higher than those who view him favorably. As a result, political watchers say Ritter should continue what he's doing, but they also predict the final four weeks of the campaign season will be ugly.

Such high negatives indicate that Beauprez failed to make the election more about Bill Ritter than himself. By not jumping on early, Beauprez's own record took a giant hit, and his negatives are atrocious, eight points higher than his favorability, and certainly not portentious of gathering a huge chunk of the "unaffiliated" crowd. Contrary to reports in the Denver media that have repeated the general disaffection for the GOP as a reason for Beauprez's fall in the polls, Beauprez and his campaign appear to be responsible for the rather poor showing in the polls so far. He still has a month left to target Ritter's views on illegal immigration and capture some of the momentum that that issue provides, but will it be enough, especially with absentee ballots going out in the next week or so?