City clerk shares expected turnout for Colorado Springs election

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - With the city elections a week away, the Colorado Springs city clerk is predicting around 150,000 ballots to be returned by election day on April 4.

This would be about a 40% turnout, which City Clerk Sarah Johnson said is about average for a mayoral election.

Here’s how the numbers stand a week before the election, and how it compares, according to the City of Colorado Springs website:

Initially, around 306,000 ballots were sent out, with that number increasing to more than 311,000.

Of those, almost 40,000 have been returned. This is nearly 13% of the total number of ballots sent out.

In 2019, when Mayor John Suthers was re-elected, 46,420 ballots were returned a week before Election Day, which is a nearly 18% turnout. In total, 99,028 ballots were returned by Election Day. This was a turnout of about 38%.

In total, there were only four candidates on the ballot, including then-incumbent Suthers.

In 2015, there were about 38,459 ballots returned a week before election night, a turnout of 17.30%. Like this year’s election year, 2015 saw the election of a new mayor. John Suthers won the vote against six other candidates, including a write-in.

In total, 90,475 ballots were turned in for this election, with a voter turnout of about 40% by election day.

This year, in 2023, 12 people are running for mayor. By Election Day, if none of the candidates get more than 50% of the vote, the election will go into a runoff. Compared to the past two elections, Johnson’s prediction would be closest to the 2015 election, both in numbers and in scenario. In both election years, the incumbent mayor was leaving office (then-Mayor Steve Bach announced he was not seeking re-election) and the race saw a larger number of candidates step forward. 2015′s election did go to a runoff between two of the candidates.

For the full breakdown of this year’s ballot issues, including in-depth interviews with each mayoral candidate and a forum hosted by KKTV anchor Adam Atchison, click here.

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