Douglas County Election Results 2026: We Said on October 20 That Boebert Would Lose This County, and She Lost It by 11 Points

We published the call on October 20. The headline was "Lauren Boebert Is Going to Lose," and the argument underneath it was narrower and more specific than the headline: the 4th Congressional District is decided in Douglas County, which casts more than half its vote, and the number to watch was Boebert's margin here against the 0.6 points she won it by in 2024. Wednesday morning the county has counted 191,580 ballots in that race. Eileen Laubacher has 54.0 percent of them. Lauren Boebert has 43.0. The congresswoman did not lose Douglas County by a little. She lost it by 21,089 votes, 11 points, in a county Donald Trump carried by seven two years ago.

District-wide, the seat is not decided. With 343,281 votes counted across 21 counties, Laubacher leads 49.2 to 47.7, a margin of 4,894 votes, and the Colorado Sun called it too close to call overnight with roughly 80 percent of the vote in. Our model's scenario of an eight-point national swing plus a ten-point Douglas swing produced "Laubacher by 4,390." The Douglas swing turned out to be 11.6 points.

The county, line by line against what we wrote

The Oct. 15 piece named one number as the test: Boebert's Douglas County margin, against zero and against the 0.60 points she won the county by in 2024. She finished 11 points under zero. The June primary had already shown Douglas County Democrats casting more CD4 primary ballots than Republicans, 43,288 to 42,055, and we said then that a 32,000-ballot Republican advantage had not narrowed but inverted. The general election repeated the inversion with a much larger electorate.

The Oct. 20 district piece got two things right that matter more than the headline. First, that the plains were not the story. The 14 rural counties did what they always do; Kiowa went 83.8 percent for Boebert, Cheyenne 81.6, Baca 75.6, Kit Carson 76.4, and none of it moved the district because together they are a tenth of it. Second, that the firewall was the suburban bloc, and the instruction was "watch Larimer and Weld." Larimer's piece of the district went 58.3 percent for Laubacher to 38.7 for Boebert on 46,786 votes. Weld's went 56.6 to 40.2 the other way on 28,248. Arapahoe's small slice went 61.2 Laubacher; Elbert went 65.6 Boebert on 14,807; Adams, 61.2 Boebert; El Paso, 70.7 Boebert. The bloc held for her outside Larimer. Larimer and Douglas together were enough to put her behind.

The arithmetic we published ran scenarios, and the one closest to the result was a uniform eight-point national swing on top of a ten-point Douglas swing, which produced Laubacher by 4,390 votes. The actual district margin Wednesday morning is 4,894, with the Douglas swing at 11.6 points rather than ten. The model also said that at a six-point swing the result would be "a recount, not a race call," and that remains the honest description of a 1.4-point margin with a fifth of the vote uncounted. We said one chance in three. The seat is now, at worst for her, a coin flip tilted against the incumbent, and the county that decides it has already been counted almost entirely.

Where we were wrong

The Lopez piece said Douglas County would be his best county and that double digits here was the test. He got 3.5 percent in Douglas County and 2.8 statewide, 6,802 votes here. That thesis failed by its own measure, and the Republican vote did not split so much as shrink. Marx's 42.3 percent in Douglas County is below the 45 percent floor the Oct. 20 piece said he could hit, and far below the 49.46 that would have preserved the county's Republican-for-governor streak. Phil Weiser carried Douglas County 51.2 to 42.3, the first Democrat for governor to do so in the span our pieces covered; Jared Polis lost it by 0.68 points in 2022. Statewide Weiser won 60.9 to 33.6.

The county races and questions

The commission seat Abe Laydon is leaving is the one county race still open. Irene Bonham led the first batch of the night 50.2 to 49.8, and Jake Bockenfeld has led since the second, 96,468 to 92,825 Wednesday morning, 51.0 to 49.0. About 12,700 returned ballots were not in the count as of the dashboard's morning figure, some of them signature-cure cases that will not resolve until Nov. 12, so a 3,643-vote margin is not a result yet. The other three countywide offices are settled: Sheri Davis holds the clerk's office 55.7 to 44.3 over Jim Oehler, Tim Dietz is treasurer 52.6 to 47.4 over Dan Smith, and Toby Damisch stays assessor 53.4 to 46.6 over Kara Garr. Note the pattern: the Republican countywide candidates won by 5 to 11 points, Boebert lost the same county by 11, and Marx lost it by 9.

Question 200, expanding the commission from three to five, is passing 52.2 to 47.8 and is not yet certain. Question 201, which asked how a five-member board should be drawn, went 58.1 percent for five district seats over three districts plus two at-large. Question 1A passed 72.8 to 27.2. The school district's $54 million mill levy override, 5A, is failing 45.4 to 54.6, a 17,307-vote gap the remaining ballots cannot close.

The legislature

Bob Marshall holds House District 43 for the Democrats 56.8 to 43.2 over Nate Marsh, a 6,134-vote margin. Anthony Hartsook leads House District 44 for the Republicans 51.5 to 46.3 over Richard Bowness, 2,223 votes, close enough to wait on. Max Brooks holds House District 45, 55.4 to 42.6. In Senate District 4, Teddy Collins won 56.2 to 43.8 district-wide and 67.6 percent of the Douglas County portion. Senate District 30 is the surprise: Democrat Kevin Leung leads Republican John Carson 52.5 to 47.5, 47,395 to 42,961, a 4,434-vote margin in a district that is almost entirely Douglas County. That one is not called either, but a Democrat leading a Douglas County state Senate seat the morning after is the clearest sign of what happened here.

The towns and the split ticket

Castle Rock elected Laura Cavey mayor with 50.5 percent in a three-way race over Amelia Thomas (29.0) and Stu Butler (20.5). Council District 3 is a 154-vote race, Matt Smith 2,339 to Tiffany Coyle 2,185, and District 5 went to Mitchell Sawin 62.6 to 37.4. Castle Pines passed both annexation questions, 300 at 71.6 percent and 301 at 64.6. Larkspur Fire's 6A mill levy is passing 52.4 to 47.6 and its 6B debt question 51.0 to 49.0, both on about 4,200 votes.

The statewide races show the county's split personality in one column. Douglas County voters gave John Hickenlooper 49.9 percent to Mark Baisley's 45.6 and Weiser 51.2 to Marx's 42.3, then gave Michael Allen 53.1 percent over Jena Griswold for attorney general and Kevin Grantham 50.8 over Jeff Bridges for treasurer; both Republicans lost statewide by 17 and 19 points. Secretary of state was nearly even here, Amanda Gonzalez 49.2 to James Wiley 48.2. On the measures the county voted no on Amendment 87 (56.5 percent against, while it leads statewide 50.5 to 49.5), no on Proposition 137 (56.9 against; 50.3 yes statewide), no on Proposition NN (53.6 against; passing statewide 55.4), no on Amendment 84 (52.8 against; failing statewide) and yes on Proposition 133 (70.8).

What happens now

The county's last batch posted at about 1 a.m. Wednesday. The dashboard's 208,154 returned ballots against 195,492 counted leaves roughly 12,700 to add, and that figure includes envelopes whose signatures did not match. If yours is one of them, the clerk mails a letter and the deadline to cure is 11:59 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12; the county's track-your-ballot page shows the status. We will update the results page as the county posts, and the calls we have made there are limited to races where the margin exceeds the ballots left.

More: the October 20 piece, the county piece from October 15, the Marx floor argument, the Lopez piece we got wrong, could Douglas County vote blue, Bockenfeld vs. Bonham, and every race, live. We do not endorse candidates. Campaigns can send corrections to hello@discoverdougco.com.