DENVER—More than 700,000 Coloradans have already voted in the state’s June 30 primaries, with Democrats turning out in greater numbers for November ballot-setters than in recent election cycles, according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s office.
Election Day voting for governor, U.S. Senate, eight U.S. House seats, 65 state Assembly berths, and 21 state Senate slots kicks off Tuesday at 7 a.m. with nearly 117,000 polling stations and 437 ballot drop boxes open for in-person voting until 7 p.m. at 137 voter centers across Colorado’s 64 counties.
Colorado’s June 30 primary is the 30th state party preliminary of the 2026 midterms’ election cycle. Following a July pause, five states stage primaries on August 4: Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington.
The primary’s pre-Election Day turnout will be significantly higher than it was for 2024 primaries, when less than 22 percent of the state’s registered voters participated, the lowest turnout since 2016.
As of June 26, the state’s Secretary of State’s office reported 327,493 Democratic and 228,346 Republican primary ballots of 639,000 cast had been processed. With three days to go in the early voting and 16 percent of the state’s registered constituency voting, turnout for a primary could be the highest since 2018.
Colorado’s June 30 ballot features several marquee races. Democratic Party primaries for governor, U.S. Senate, and Colorado’s U.S. Congressional District 8 (CD 8) are among the hotly contested elections in a blue state where President Donald Trump has lost the past three elections—including by 11 percentage points to Kamala Harris in 2024—but has bright red streaks: Four of its eight U.S. House seats are held by Republicans.
Top June 30 GOP preliminaries include a fierce three-way gubernatorial primary and former state Rep. Ron Hanks’s unlikely campaign to unseat Trump-endorsed Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) in their CD 3 primary.
Colorado mirrors the national complexion. It has a distinct rural-urban divide: the GOP dominates across its vast rural swaths, while Democrats prevail in urban and suburban areas. Like much of the nation, Colorado elections are ultimately determined by the state’s 2 million unaffiliated voters—more than those registered as Democrats and Republicans combined.
But unlike much of the nation, Colorado has a wrinkle. It allows unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in a party primary of their choosing.
Primary Scorecard
Discord between extremes is exposing fissures in both parties nationwide and in Colorado. Progressives, including Democratic Socialists of America candidates, are aggressively campaigning for U.S. Senate, House, and state legislative seats, pushing the Democratic Party to the left in primaries, while a MAGA-inflamed gubernatorial challenger is among populist conservatives taking on fellow Republicans, pushing the party to the right.
Incumbents in general, and centrists in particular, are being challenged by hyper-liberal candidates in at least four Democratic primary battles, including in the U.S. Senate preliminary where Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), a moderate former two-term governor seeking a second Senate term, is being vigorously challenged by liberal state Sen. Julie Gonzales in a race polls say is tighter than projected.
The Republican U.S. Senate entry to square off against either Hickenlooper or Gonzales in November is already set. Veteran state lawmaker Sen. Mark Baisley does not have a GOP primary challenger.
With Democratic Gov. Jared Polis term-limited, both parties are waging high-profile gubernatorial primaries in which an uber-progressive and a MAGA-inspired preacher could pull off upsets to win November berths opposite each other.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a liberal, has out-raised, and in some cases out-polled, the formerly heavily favored moderate, two-term U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) in a heated contest where more than $12 million has been spent, with Weiser shelling out a Colorado governor primary record $6.7 million.
Meanwhile, three GOP rivals are seeking the party’s nod to take on Weiser or Bennet in November, with a dark horse emerging as the frontrunner: All Things Possible Ministries founder and CEO Victor Marx, a U.S. Marine veteran making his first bid for public office, is the fundraising leader and poll pace-setter in his race against longtime state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and state Rep. Scott Bottoms.
Of the state’s four incumbent U.S. House Democrats—Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow, and Brittany Petterson—only DeGette, who has served CD 1 for 30 years, faces a significant primary threat, with surveys showing 29-year-old Democratic Socialist Melat Kiros gaining traction in the Denver metro district.
Of Colorado’s four Republican House incumbents—Reps. Jeff Hurd, Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, and Gabe Evans—only Hurd in CD 3 must win a primary. After being endorsed by President Donald Trump, he is heavily favored to sweep past challenger Ron Hanks and win a second term in the red district.
Evans may not face a primary challenger but must brace for a stiff November battle in CD 8, one of the nation’s most purple House districts. He is among 18 sitting U.S. House reps—including 14 Republicans—whose 2026 reelections are rated as 2026 tossups by Cooks Political Report, Inside Elections, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
CD 8 is one of 44 GOP-held U.S. House seats identified as “Districts In Play” by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, among seats the party believes are most “flippable” in wresting control of the chamber from Republicans, who now hold a 218–212 majority.
CD 8 Brawl
Post-2020 Census reapportionment by a bipartisan commission solidified party holds on the state’s then-existing seven House districts, while making its newly allotted eighth district in the fast-growing I-25 corridor northeast of Denver, spanning parts of Adams, Larimer, and Weld counties, among the nation’s most competitive.
Democrat Yadira Caraveo won the first CD 8 election in 2022 by 1,600 votes, or 0.7 percentage points, but lost her reelection bid to Evans by about 2,500 votes, or 1.7 percentage points, in 2024.
Evans will seek reelection against either state Rep. Manny Rutinel of Commerce City or former state Rep. Shannon Bird of Westminster, who are running in the Democratic primary.
The Democratic CD 8 primary pits the former Earthjustice attorney Rutinel, 31, the son of a single, immigrant mother from the Dominican Republic, against longtime state lawmaker Bird, 57, in a district with the largest number of Hispanic residents of any congressional district in Colorado, making up 38.5 percent of the adult population, and where recent polls show little separation between them among likely Democratic voters.
Rutinel, a state Assembly member since 2023, has centered his campaign on immigration reform and criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), which he’d drastically curtail under expanded oversight.
An economist and attorney, Rutinel has criticized Bird for voting with Colorado Republicans on a bill that requires state and local government agencies and officials to cooperate with ICE agents when she was in the state assembly.
Bird has espoused her success as a pragmatic problem-solver with the proven capacity to get votes from moderate, centrist, and unaffiliated voters while getting results by working with Republican colleagues to move bills, pointing to her pivotal roles on key Assembly committees, including on fiscal policy and budget panels, during her 2019–26 statehouse tenure.
While overhauling ICE is on her agenda as well, if elected to the House, healthcare would be her priority issue. She pledges to renew health insurance affordability tax credits that expired last year and reverse Medicaid cuts passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Rutinel’s campaign has nearly doubled Bird’s larder in contributions, according to their latest Federal Election Commission reports. Rutinel’s campaign had raised $4.13 million, spent $3.22 million, and had $909,527 in the bank as of June 10, while Bird’s campaign had raised $2.19 million, spent $1.9 million, and had $290,667 cash on hand.
