Living up to its reputation as one of the nation’s closest contests for Congress, the race for Colorado’s 8th Congressional District remained locked in a stalemate Thursday as Democratic incumbent Yadira Caraveo clung to a thin lead over her Republican opponent, state Rep. Gabe Evans.
Nearly 48 hours after polls closed, both campaigns were waiting to see if new ballot totals posted by election officials would sway the race in a more definitive direction. As of 2:05 p.m., Caraveo had 49.1% of the vote to Evans’ 48.3%, out of 274,882 votes tallied.
The race is separated by a little more than 2,000 votes.
Alan Philp, Evans’ campaign consultant who also ran state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer’s race against Caraveo in 2022, said the campaign believed there were up to 75,000 ballots yet to be counted across the 8th District’s three counties — Weld, Adams and Larimer — though not all of those include the CD8 race.
“So prob going to be super close,” Philp wrote in an email Thursday afternoon.
A spokesman for Caraveo’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Another batch of ballots from the two counties that include the bulk of the district — Adams and Weld — are expected to be reported to the Secretary of State’s office later this afternoon.
The race to represent the district, which covers the northern Denver suburbs up through Greeley and Berthoud, is one of the most closely watched congressional contests in the nation. Cook Political Report ranks it as a tossup, one of only a handful of congressional districts in the country with Democratic incumbents that fall in that category.
Caraveo won it two years ago by fewer than 2,000 votes.
The race has attracted big spending from outside groups, much of which fueled a seemingly endless round of campaign ads leading up to Election Day.
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