We combed through Colorado’s 2024 election results. Here’s what we found.

The story of every election can be told in numbers. This year is no different. 

The Colorado Sun pored through the results of 2024 races up and down the ballot in search of data points that could explain the outcomes. Here’s what we found:

Note: Some results may shift slightly when county clerks across Colorado finish counting any outstanding ballots Thursday. The changes, however, should be minimal, as the vast majority of votes have already been tabulated.

Yadira Caraveo underperformed in Adams County

An underperformance in Adams County compared with how she fared in 2022 cost Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo reelection. 

Through Tuesday afternoon, Caraveo was winning 54% of the vote in Adams County, down a percentage point compared with 2022. Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans, meanwhile, was winning 43% of the vote in Adams County as of Tuesday afternoon, more than 2 percentage points better than the share won in 2022 by Caraveo’s Republican opponent, Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer. 

In Weld County, Caraveo was winning 39% of the vote through Tuesday afternoon. That’s actually a little more than a percentage point better than the share she won there in 2022. 

Evans was winning 58% of the vote in Weld County on Tuesday afternoon, about a half a percentage point less in Weld County than Kirkmeyer won in 2022. 

Caraveo spent a lot of time in Weld County after beating Kirkmeyer in 2022, trying to expand on her roughly 1,600-vote win. But she didn’t make up enough ground in the Republican stronghold to offset her losses in Adams County. 

As of Tuesday afternoon, Evans was beating Caraveo districtwide by about 2,600 votes, or one percentage point.

The Adams County underperformance is a troubling sign for Democrats as they look to unseat Evans in 2026. 

Adams County is the Democratic heart of the swing district, and you can bet that Democrats will spend a lot of time digging into why they lost some of their vote share there over the past two years. 

Caraveo wasn’t alone in her Adams County troubles. In Senate District 21, Democratic Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet of Commerce City was leading her Republican opponent, Frederick Alfred Jr., by about 2 percentage points as of Tuesday afternoon. 

Senate District 21 was not expected to be competitive this year. An analysis of past election results by nonpartisan legislative staff conducted when the district was redrawn in 2021 found that it leaned nearly 14 percentage points in Democrats’ favor. 

Donald Trump wins Pueblo County

Donald Trump also improved his showing in Adams County this year over 2020. 

Trump was winning 44.2% of the vote through Tuesday morning, compared with his 40.4% share four years ago. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, was winning 53.1% of the vote in Adams County, down from President Joe Biden’s 56.7% share in 2020.

Trump also reversed his fortunes in Pueblo County, beating Harris with 51.3% of the vote to her 46.3%. Biden won Pueblo County in 2020 with 49.6% of the vote to Trump’s 47.9%. Trump won the county in 2016, with 46% of the vote compared with 45.6% for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Through Tuesday afternoon, Harris had a better showing this year than Biden in 2020 in Mesa, El Paso, Jefferson, Larimer and Broomfield counties. That helped offset Trump’s gains.

Overall this year, Harris was beating Trump by 11 percentage points in Colorado through Tuesday morning. That’s slightly worse than Biden’s 13.5 percentage point margin of victory in the state over Trump four years ago.

Lauren Boebert’s poor showing in Douglas County and Loveland

It wasn’t all good news for Republicans. 

Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert was reelected to Congress, but her showing in the 4th Congressional District should be nothing short of an alarm bell for the congresswoman.

As of Tuesday afternoon, she was beating Democrat Trisha Calvarese by 12 percentage points. That may sound like a lot, but remember that Republican Greg Lopez beat Calvarese in the low-turnout June special election in the district by 24 percentage points. U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican who retired in March and created the opening for Lopez and Boebert, won reelection in the district in 2022 by 24 percentage points as well.

The most worrying county-level results for Boebert through Tuesday afternoon:

• Douglas County, where Boebert was beating Calvarese by roughly 1,750 votes, favored Lopez by more than 10,000 votes in the June 25 special election and Buck by nearly 30,000 voters in 2022.
• Larimer County, where she was losing to Calvarese by about 2,500 votes. The county’s 4th District voters backed Lopez by about 1,000 votes in the special election and Buck by more than 4,000 votes in 2022. 

Democrats falter in state Senate District 5

Democrats were hopeful they could flip state Senate District 5 on the Western Slope and secure a supermajority in the upper chamber of the legislature. But the district’s voters swung back toward the GOP this year to elevate state Rep. Marc Catlin of Montrose. 

Catlin was beating Democrat Cole Buerger, a small business owner who lives in Glenwood Springs, by 4 percentage points, or about 3,500 votes, on Tuesday afternoon. Catlin will fill the seat of Republican Sen. Perry Will, who didn’t seek reelection. 

In 2022, Gov. Jared Polis won the district by 10 percentage points, while U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet won it by 6 percentage points and Attorney General Phil Weiser won by 3 percentage points. Polis, Bennet and Weiser are all Democrats. 

Democrat Kathy Plomer, who was running for an at-large seat on the state Board of Education, lost the district in 2022 by less than 1 point. She was the only Democrat running statewide two years ago who lost in the district.

Turnout was down

In 2020, the last presidential election year, the turnout rate among active voters in Colorado was 86.5%. That dropped to about 66% in 2022. 

This year, turnout was hovering around 80% as of Tuesday afternoon.

More than 100,000 active, registered voters didn’t cast ballots in the races in each of Colorado’s eighth congressional districts. The highest deficit was in the 1st Congressional District in Denver, where more than 140,000 active, registered voters sat on the sidelines.

Abortion measure passes even in Republican strongholds

The passage of Amendment 79, which preserves abortion access in the state constitution, wasn’t much of a surprise. But where it passed was.

The initiative won overwhelming support in Denver, Boulder and Jefferson counties. But it also passed in Republican parts of the state, like Douglas, El Paso and Garfield counties. It also passed in Pueblo County. That mirrors results seen in states across the country, where large numbers of Trump voters supported protections for abortion rights, even as they elected Republicans to office.

In Douglas County, about 54% of the electorate voted “yes” on the measure. 

In Weld County, it failed by only 0.2 percentage points. In Mesa County, the measure failed by 2 percentage points.

Only on the ruby red Eastern Plains and in some rural mountain areas was Amendment 79 overwhelmingly rejected.

Cost per vote for Proposition 131

More than $19 million was injected into the campaign to pass Proposition 131, which would have moved the state to an all-candidate primary system where the top four vote-getters advanced to ranked choice general elections. That was the most spent on any of the 14 statewide measures on the ballot this year. 

Proposition 131 still failed. 

In fact, as of Tuesday afternoon, the initiative had received the third lowest number of “yes” votes of the 14 statewide ballot measures this year. Only Amendment K, which would have changed the state constitution to move up some election deadlines, and Proposition 127, which would have banned mountain lion and bobcat hunting, received fewer “yes” votes.

The $19 million donated to the campaign to pass Proposition 131 represents about $14 per each of the 1.35 million votes cast for the measure.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Proposition 131 was failing with 54% of voters opposing the measure and 46% supporting it.

Kent Thiry, the wealthy former CEO of the Denver-based dialysis giant DaVita, donated about $6 million to the campaign to pass the measure.