Hello, to cut to the chase—we want to deliver more regular content on ElectionCord, so we’re starting a brief weekly newsletter/Substack to wrap up the goings-on in US politics.
There’s a Dem bias to my commentary, but I promise to be as impartial and helpful as I can.
Colorado Primaries
The headlines will be taken up by the governor’s race, where Phil Weiser defeated Michael Bennet, and Colorado’s 1st Congressional District (CO-1), where socialist candidate Melat Kiros unseated infinity-term incumbent Diana DeGette.
Governor
Sitting US Senators rarely try to leave office and run for a lower statewide office, but they’re usually successful. The last time a sitting Senator had lost a primary was before World War II, so when Michael Bennet dropped down to run for Governor of Colorado to succeed Jared Polis, it was considered a slam-dunk.
However, Bennet had to defeat Phil Weiser, the two-term Colorado Attorney General. This turned out to be significantly more difficult than Bennet had bargained for. Weiser’s local ties, a strong fundraising machine, and a rigorous campaign in the Denver Metro area caused Bennet’s polling lead to dwindle. By the final days, Weiser was leading, and he carried that momentum to Election Day itself.
Thinking this race was strictly about policy or even character is a mistake. Weiser and Bennet are both extremely boring, center-left white guys. They both criticized Polis, went after Trump, and tried to portray themselves as loyal Democrats. The main difference was that Weiser was able to make the case to be Governor of Colorado more compellingly. By not being in DC for the last 20 years, Weiser could say, “look, what Bennet does isn’t working; only I could deliver”.
The rise of anti-DC sentiment among Democratic voters continues to be a recurring theme during 2026. As we’ve tracked on our ElectionCord polling averages, the favorability of the Democratic Party is poor, and has remained poor for the entirety of Trump’s second term.
Perhaps this is unfair: there’s only so much a person in DC can do right now while Republicans control the government. However, the Democratic Party is finding that all of its institutional might cannot persuade voters to like them.
CO-1
There was startlingly little optimism for DeGette’s campaign from the jump. Kiros, a 29-year-old political novice, had very little money and zero name recognition when she announced her campaign.
DeGette had easily beaten back a primary challenge in 2018, but on paper this was going to be a much tougher lift. With the aforementioned “throw the bums out” wave brewing among Dem voters, a district as blue as CO-01 with an entrenched incumbent was a possible target seat for Justice Democrats/DSA.
And there seemed to be little faith that DeGette would hang on. Outside groups poured money in at the very end, but it appeared like a lost cause. Hakeem Jeffries basically assumed her career was over before the primary even happened.
Since CO-01 is basically just Denver County, it does provide some useful comparisons. From 2020-2024, the district was notable as a relatively well-educated and wealthy area to swing right in Colorado. It swung 5pp right from 2020 to 2024, with the vast majority of dropoffs coming from Democratic voters. Full election data can be found here at ElectionCord: https://electioncord.com/suffragium/.
Democrats lost 35,257.
Republicans gained just 3,099.
CO-1 was a solid position for a DSA challenger due to the district being highly educated and with a high population of Whites and Latinos. In the semi-secret tool that we’re using to compare counties and Congressional districts, the most similar districts to CO-1 are MN-05 (Omar) and WA-07 (Jayapal). TX-37 (Casar) is also up there. So, this district was fertile ground for a socialist campaign. You can look at more demographic data here: https://electioncord.com/genus/.
Interestingly, despite the narrative of young people being inspired by socialism, it was likely once again a mix of improved youth turnout for a primary and non-youth voters being thoroughly unimpressed with a longtime incumbent. If you look at the vote return rates, DeGette areas were running 10-20pp higher than Kiros areas. Despite this, Kiros won with extremely strong persuasion relative to expectations except for the oldest voters.
I do think this is important for the Left to note; they are winning races as much because Dems are frustrated with the status quo as anything to do with socialism or populism. If I had to guess, it’s the populism that’s giving the Left a base to run campaigns, but the final margins are decided by voters, particularly nonwhite voters, who have had enough of incumbent Congresspeople with limited presence in the district.
While it wasn’t a spectacular margin, it’s clear that DeGette didn’t have much of a base of support. Looking at the other races, she badly underperformed John Hickenlooper. All candidates paled in comparison to Phil Weiser, who got 65% in Denver that propelled him to a statewide victory.
Hickenlooper’s unimpressive, but satisfactory primary win over State Senator Julie Gonzales (likely to drop to roughly 7%) saw more “Dem Tea Party” characteristics, but it wasn’t quite enough. Gonzales probably could’ve won had she not been outspent so heavily.
Charts!
At ElectionCord, we now have a series of charting tools to sort through Congressional districts, our special 100K districts, and counties by various characteristics. For example, you can see how Dem votes correlate with graduate degree attainment.
Link here: https://electioncord.com/charta/
We also have a “shift mode” where you can sort electoral movement and characteristics. Here we have all 435 Congressional districts by 2020 to 2024 presidential shift plotted by English-speakers. As you can see, Dems clearly lost the most ground in districts that spoke the least English.
You can even sort dots by state or region for even more granular analysis. Check it out; use it to post bait; it’s very cool! We’re working on a steady stream of new electoral analysis tools, so if you’re a political campaign or news organization looking for analysis, be sure to hit us up or join the Discord.
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