By BRIAN PORTER | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
As middle America largely was a sea of Red on Tuesday evening and into the morning, Colorado was a liberal outlier, going with Kamala Harris for President.
While conservatives woke Tuesday morning to celebrate the election of Donald J. Trump as the 47th U.S. President, a glance at the election map details Coloradans still reside in a Blue state. Harris earned 54.6% of the 2,517,989 votes cast, defeating Trump by an 11.5% margin, according to results with 72% of ballots reported.
Six of the seven states surrounding Colorado are projected to go for Trump. Wyoming to the north of Weld County to the western state line gave him 72.3% support, Nebraska bordering the northeastern plains of the state provided 60.2% support, Kansas the neighbor to the east of Kit Carson and to Baca County provided 57.4% support, Oklahoma to the south of Campo offered 66.2% support with Cimmaron County directly south of Colorado offering 92% support, Utah on the border to the Western Slope offered 58.9% support and Arizona is projected to give Trump 51.9% support.
Only New Mexico is projected to follow Colorado and support Harris, but by only about half as much as Colorado. From Idaho and Nevada to North Carolina south to Florida, it is overwhelmingly a collection of red states, with Colorado being among the few Blue blemishes. So how did it happen? Following is a glance at where Harris may have won and Trump may have lost the election in Colorado.
Every analysis of Republican support in Colorado must start with a few dependable, populous counties. El Paso heads that list with the state’s top ballot count this election, offering Trump 53.1% of the vote. Douglas County, which entered Election Day fifth in ballot count, handed Trump 51.8% support. Weld and Mesa Counties, the counties ranking ninth and 10th in ballot count entering Election Day, offered Trump 58.1% and 59.6% support, respectively.
Republicans lose the numbers game in ballot count among the top 10 counties and have to attempt to make it up in rural areas. Among those 10, four of them are Red, ranking first, fourth, ninth and 10th, but Democrats hold the other six and three in the top four.
A glance back at results in the same four Republican counties in 2020 indicates a slight decline in support for Trump in 2024, but all told measurable losses that could have helped him. El Paso County gave him 53.5% of the vote in 2020. Douglas County provided 52.4% support in 2020. Weld County’s support for Trump was 57.6% in 2020, and Mesa supported Trump with 62.8% of the vote in 2020. All totals were higher four years ago.
The solid voting block of Eastern Colorado is dependably Red for Trump, and again did not disappoint. From Cory Gardner to Ken Buck and now Lauren Boebert, most Republican candidates would say the only issue with the counties on the Eastern Plains is total votes, not the often overwhelming percentage support. For example, Morgan County supported Trump with 73.2% of the vote, but that was just 9,742 votes in a county once known as “The Capital of the Plains”. Yuma County, known as Cory Gardner Country, handed Trump 82% support, but just 3,643 votes. Pick your county in Eastern Colorado and ballot count is small in a country where the cattle heavily outnumber the voters. So even while it has correctly been coined MAGA Country, the vote count cannot counter the larger urban totals.
Moving just west of the Eastern Plains, the Front Range sprawl and mountain communities are Democrat strongholds, and the areas which decided this election. Larimer County may have been a surprise with 59.1% support for Harris. The vote count in Larimer was within 3,000 of what Harris pulled out of Boulder County with 79.0% support. Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver and Jefferson Counties all gave Harris decisive victories and wide margins in vote count. The election was essentially decided in those seven counties, where Harris earned about 900,000 of the 1.3 million votes she collected in the state.
A strip of Blue counties on the Western Slope from Routt in the north to Saguache and La Plata in the south has changed the dynamic of the state, leaving too few votes in too few counties on the Western Slope for a Republican to win statewide. The Western Slope has become essentially a split of Red and Blue counties.
The urban-rural divide also means a statewide election costs Republicans more, as they must perform outreach to all 64 counties, meanwhile Democrats can focus on urban areas and may not even visit rural counties.