Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo maintained her razor-thin lead over Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans Thursday morning in Colorado’s ultra-competitive 8th Congressional District race as untallied ballots continued to be counted and added to the election totals.
Caraveo had 49.2% to Evans’ 48.3% as of 8 a.m. The incumbent led her Republican challenger by 2,419 votes out of 264,340 ballots counted.
The candidates were leading in the expected counties: Caraveo had the edge in Adams County and Evans was ahead in Weld County. Those two counties account for the bulk of the district’s voters; a slice of Larimer County is also in the 8th.
ELECTION RESULTS: Live Colorado election results for the 2024 election
Ballot counting will continue on Thursday; neither candidate has declared victory nor conceded defeat.
Evans watched results come in Tuesday night at a small event space in Brighton while Democrats gathered at Pipefitters Local 208 in Adams County. Caraveo was not at the gathering and her spokesman, Kevin Porter, said “itap early and this race is too close to call.”
“Our team is closely monitoring votes as they come in and are cautiously optimistic about where we are,” he said.
Several Democratic luminaries were at the watch party, including Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and former U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter.
“We’re feeling optimistic. We’re excited about the evening,” Adams County Commissioner Lynn Baca, a Democrat, said in a room of nearly 100 supporters. “And we’re pulling for Yadira.”
At Evans’ packed watch party in Brighton, the mood was upbeat. Alan Philp, Evans’ campaign consultant who also ran state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer’s race against Caraveo in 2022, said the campaign “felt great.” He said Evans was “in a better position than we were two years ago at the same point.”
Shortly before 11 p.m., Evans told supporters that his campaign believed a sizable share of Republican votes was still outstanding and that “we have that path to victory.”
“I know we all want a decision tonight. Guess what? This is how it works when We the People are able to go out and select our next generation of leaders,” he said.
The race to represent the district is one of the most closely watched congressional contests in the nation. Cook Political Report , one of only a handful of congressional districts in the country with Democratic incumbents that fall in that category.
Two recent polls placed the race in a virtual tie, with the most recent giving the Democratic incumbent a less than 2-point advantage over Evans — well within the survey’s margin of error.
There was little room for error by either campaign, given the even political makeup of the district, which stretches across suburban neighborhoods, oil and gas fields, and farms from Commerce City to Greeley.
Outside spending on the race has nearly reached $30 million, .
It is the state’s most heavily Latino congressional district, a reality that likely helped push Caraveo, the daughter of immigrants from Mexico, to a razor-thin victory over her Republican opponent two years ago.
This time, Caraveo’s opponent — whose grandfather immigrated to the United States from Mexico — shares her Latino heritage. Evans is a state representative from Fort Lupton.
Caraveo, 43, a pediatrician from Thornton, has had to navigate several issues salient to voters in this election cycle, namely an economy that many voters cite as a primary worry and a porous southern border that has seen a record numbers of migrants entering the U.S. without authorization, or seeking asylum, over the last three years.
As a state lawmaker, Caraveo staked out a progressive position on immigration, even urging President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2021 like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She has since modified that position, getting blowback from her own party after she criticized Harris over the Biden administration’s border policy last summer.
Evans, 38, an Army veteran and former police officer, has had to do his own dodging and weaving on his positions during the campaign. While he received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement ahead of the June 25 GOP primary, Evans has kept Trump at arm’s length, given his unpopularity in Colorado — a fact affirmed by three recent polls that showed Harris with a double-digit lead over her Republican rival.
Evans has had to repeatedly clarify his position on abortion during the campaign, batting down claims by political opponents that he favors a national ban on the procedure. Colorado is one of the most permissive states in the country when it comes to abortion access.
In 2022, many politics watchers wondered if the Libertarian in the race, who garnered more than 9,000 votes, cost Kirkmeyer a victory in a contest decided by fewer than 2,000 votes. This time, the Libertarian candidate dropped out of the race in early September and threw his support to Evans.
There are still two third-party candidates in the race: Chris Baum, of the Voter Approval Party, and Susan Patricia Hall, of the Unity Party. Together they have garnered nearly 7,000 votes — far more than the number that separates the two major party candidates.
