This is the busiest primary day since the June 8 blockbuster, with three states (CO, CT and MN) holding primaries and a fourth (GA) holding a runoff.  So there’s a lot of ground to cover.

Colorado

A factor in all the Colorado races is that most counties in the state went to an all-mail-ballot system this year, which could boost overall turnout but will definitely affect the timing of votes (though Colorado’s had heavy early voting for a while now).

Colorado’s Senate races have become very competitive in both parties coming down the stretch.  Appointed Sen. Michael Bennet (D) got hit with a controversial (in its timing) New York Times piece about his involvement in an unsuccessful investment by the Denver public schools, which immediately generated an attack ad by his opponent, former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff (D), who has been pounding Bennet for weeks as someone too close to Wall Street.  Late polls show a very close race, with Survey USA indicating Romanoff has moved ahead while PPP shows Bennet hanging onto a small lead.

On the Republican side, polls also differ as to whether district attorney Ken Buck has maintained his lead over former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, despite his recent gaff-a-thon.  Norton surprised a lot of observers by inviting John McCain into the state to campaign with her at the very end; we’ll see if she knew what she was doing.  While both candidates are quite conservative, Buck’s the preferred candidate of the Tea Party folk and the national conservative chattering classes, so if he wins they will claim another Establishment scalp.

The ongoing meltdown known as the Colorado Republican gubernatorial contest is also ending with no clear leader; one poll has Tea Party activist Dan Maes narrowly leading; the other shows former congressman Scott McInnis narrowly regaining the lead.  As you may have heard, McInnis’ campaign imploded in July when the Denver Post revealed that a wonky series of columns he “wrote” as part of a lucrative think tank contract were heavily plagiarized.  But Maes has been hounded by campaign finance violations and poor fundraising, and also earned heavy derision by claiming a popular bike-sharing program in which Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper was involved is in fact part of a United Nations plot to take over Denver.  You really can’t make this stuff up.

The “winner” of this primary will immediately be under heavy pressure to drop out and allow the state party to choose a more electable candidate, and also to beg former congressman Tom Tancredo to close down his campaign on the far-right, theocratic Constitution Party ticket, which polls indicate would split the GOP vote in half and guarantee a Hickenlooper victory.

Georgia

Rivaling Colorado in inter-Republican drama has been the gubernatorial runoff in Georgia, which polls show as coming down to a real nail-biter between primary first-place finisher Karen Handel and former congressman Nathan Deal.  Continuing her effort to cast herself as a “conservative reformer” taking on the corrupt “good ol’ boys” of the Republican establishment, Handel has continued to attack Deal’s ethics record and Washington associations. Deal, probably hoping for a very low turnout dominated by ideologues, has pounded Handel for alleged “liberal” heresy on abortion and gay rights.  Both campaigns are in danger of being overshadowed by their supporters, with Sarah Palin making a very conspicuous last-day appearance alongside Handel in Atlanta (Mitt Romney is also doing robocalls for Handel), while Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee have campaigned for Deal.  Deal also has a massive endorsement list of Republican state legislators owing to Handel’s many attacks on their integrity as a group.

The runoff has become so nasty that Republicans are already planning “unity” events; Democrat Roy Barnes waits in the wings, raising money.

There are two Republican congressional runoffs that will affect turnout patterns; one is for Deal’s old seat in North Georgia, where special election runoff winner Tom Graves will face former state legislator Lee Hawkins for the fourth time in three months.  The other is in Handel’s base area, in north metro Atlanta, where longtime conservative congressman John Linder (R) is retiring.  His former chief of staff, Rob Woodall, is expected to defeat Jody Hice, a Southern Baptist minister and radio gabber whose billboards feature a reference to the president with a hammer-and-sickle replacing the “c” in the word “change.”  Nice.

Connecticut

In Connecticut, both parties have competitive gubernatorial primaries involving self-funded candidates facing challengers who are receiving pretty generous public financing under the state’s Clean Elections system (which is under attack in the courts in the aftermath of the Citizens United decision).  Among Democrats, wealthy cable station owner Ned Lamont, famous for his left-bent challenge to Joe Lieberman in 2006, has run a surprisingly “centrist” campaign focused on the state’s many fiscal and economic problems.  His challenger, former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, who narrowly lost the gubernatorial nomination four years ago, has been pounding him in a populist vein, while fending off allegations that he helped give a company that did work on his home a no-bid contract as mayor (not something you’d want to do in this state, since that’s what brought down former Gov. John Rowland). Malloy has closed the gap with Lamont in the stretch run, and either candidate could win.

The Republican self-funder is former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley, and the publicly-financed challenger is Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele.  This race has also featured personal attacks, mainly involving Foley’s ownership interest in a Georgia textile plant that closed, throwing workers out of jobs.  Late polls show exceptional instability in this race, but indicate that Fedele is rapidly gaining on Foley.

Meanwhile, former wrestling exec Linda McMahon, who beat former congressman Rob Simmons at the state GOP convention for the official party endorsement, will face Simmons (who reentered the race after dropping out for a while) and Tea Party activist Peter Schiff, but isn’t expected to have much trouble winning.

Minnesota

In Minnesota, the DFL (Minnesota’s unique version of the Democratic Party) gubernatorial primary features the official party candidate (as selected in a state convention that some candidates skipped), state House Speaker Mary Anderson Kelliher, and two wealthy self-funders, former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton and former state legislator Matt Entenza, both of whom have put about $3 million into the race.  Dayton has held a steady if not spectacular lead over Kelliher, who hopes to pull a ground-game-driven upset in what could be a very low turnout election.  All three Democrats lead certain Republican nominee Tom Emmer in general election polls, partly because the likely candidate of the Independence Party (still around more than a decade after Jesse Ventura’s election), Tom Horner, is pulling a lot of Republican votes. The DFL hasn’t won a governor’s race since 1986, but this could be the year the drought ends.

If you want more details, I’ve done previews of Colorado, Georgia and Connecticut/Minnesota over at FiveThirtyEight.

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.

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