Colorado’s 3rd District is red and, thanks to redistricting, has gotten redder since the last time Rep. Lauren Boebert ran — it has a FiveThirtyEight partisan lean of R+19.
So what the heck happened? While Republicans overall performed poorer than expected this midterm cycle, certain things about this race made it particularly susceptible to a potential upset — and help explain why Boebert wasn’t popping Champagne on election night.
Part of the story here is the fact that Colorado as a whole was hit with a blue wave this election, which washed out even into Boebert’s red district. Not only did Democrats win big-ticket races for governor and Senate, they also won competitive House races in the 7th District and newly created 8th District and flipped seven seats in the state legislature, giving the state GOP the smallest minority it ever had. Republican state Rep. Colin Larson, who lost his seat, called it an “extinction-level event,” according to Colorado Public Radio: “This was the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaur, and in this case, the dinosaur was the Republican Party.”
