KUSA — In a Tweet Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump officially endorsed Republican candidate Walker Stapleton in Colorado's gubernatorial race.
"Walker Stapleton is running as the highly respected Republican Candidate," the Tweet said in part. "His credentials and talents are impeccable. He has my complete and total Endorsement!"
Stapleton faces Democrat Jared Polis in the November election which is set to take place on Nov. 6. You can find out more about both candidates on the 9NEWS politics page.
The Stapleton campaign did not respond to a question from Colorado Politics about whether it knew in advance of Trump’s endorsement.
President Trump’s endorsement comes as Stapleton, the state treasurer, has been trailing Polis, the Boulder congressman, in public and internal polls, according to our partner Colorado Politics.
A survey released Wednesday by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation with the Colorado Health Foundation shows Polis ahead of Stapleton by 11 percentage points among Colorado registered voters, with 44 percent for Polis and 33 percent for Stapleton and with 15 percent still undecided.
The Kaiser-CHF telephone poll of 1,803 Colorado adults was conducted several weeks ago — Aug. 15 through Sept. 19. It has an estimated margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
An earlier survey, from Keating Research and Magellan Strategies, showed Polis with a seven-point lead, 47 percent to Stapleton’s 40 percent, with 11 percent undecided. That poll of 600 Coloradans deemed to be likely voters was conducted Sept. 18-20 and has an estimated margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.
It’s not clear what advantage an endorsement from the President will give Stapleton as he tries to reach out to independent and moderate Democratic voters in November’s election. In Colorado, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election by five percentage points, and a June poll from a Republican-affiliated firm, Cygnal Research, showed that 69 percent of unaffiliated voters in Colorado have an unfavorable view of the president.
Nationally, polls show that Trump is wildly popular among Republicans, but equally as unpopular among Democrats, although Gallup reports that Trump’s overall national rating has ticked up a few points in recent weeks, to 43 percent approval versus 53 percent disapproval as of the first week of October, amid the controversy over the turmoil leading to Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.
Before June’s primary election, Stapleton embraced Trump and said the president would be welcome to campaign with him in Colorado. More recently, the candidate has been more guarded in his references to Trump, saying that as governor he would support policies from “Washington” that he agreed with and oppose those he didn’t.
