Douglas County's 2026 Primary: What to Watch Tuesday Night, and Where to Follow Results

Colorado's primary is Tuesday, June 30, and polls close at 7 p.m. If you still have a mail ballot sitting on the counter, it has to be received, not postmarked, by 7 p.m., so drop it at an official box rather than trusting the mail at this point.

We will be posting live Douglas County results as they come in, race by race. Colorado runs mostly on mail ballots, so expect a big batch of numbers shortly after 7 p.m. and a slower trickle through the night.

First, one thing that changes how you should read every number tonight. Douglas County is not the deep-red county it used to be. Party officials said so themselves at the March assembly: the county is roughly 34 percent registered Republican now, and unaffiliated voters are the largest bloc at nearly half the active electorate. Colorado runs a semi-open primary, so those unaffiliated voters can pull either party's ballot, and they tend to nudge a race toward its more moderate candidate. Keep that in your back pocket.

Here is what we are actually watching.

House District 44: the gun-purity scalp hunt (Parker)

The marquee local fight is the Republican primary in House District 44, where incumbent Anthony Hartsook faces a floor-nominated challenger, Bob Davis. You will hear that Davis is outspending Hartsook nine to one. That number is technically true and genuinely misleading.

Here is the fuller picture. Davis has been emptying his own campaign account while Hartsook sits on his, because Hartsook does not need to spend it. An establishment-aligned outside group, the Colorado Conservative Leadership Fund (whose single biggest funder is the state charter-schools league), is dropping roughly $300,000 in independent expenditures to prop up Hartsook and bury Davis. Count the outside money and the edge flips entirely: Davis is the one getting outgunned, closer to six to one.

So what is this actually about? Guns, mostly. Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the hardline gun group, branded Hartsook a "traitor" over a handful of bills he was tied to, called on him to resign, and is cheering Davis as the purity candidate. The more mainstream Colorado State Shooting Association endorsed Hartsook, and so did the Colorado Chamber of Commerce. It is an RMGO-versus-establishment proxy war, and the establishment showed up with a $300,000 air force.

Our read: lean Hartsook. He has incumbency, name ID, caucus-chair stature, the Chamber, and that outside-money shield, and the unaffiliated-voter dynamic cuts his way. But RMGO has knocked off incumbents it deems insufficiently pure in low-turnout primaries before, and a challenger who out-hustled the incumbent's own spending is a real sign of grassroots heat. Call it Hartsook somewhere around 60 to 65 percent, with Davis a live underdog. If Davis wins, that is the scalp of the night and a statewide story. Our full HD-44 breakdown is here.

County Commissioner, District 1: the actual toss-up (Parker / North County)

This is the one race on the Douglas County ballot that is genuinely up for grabs, and it happens to be the one that most directly runs the county: growth, open space, the budget, how the Sheriff gets funded. The seat is open for the first time in eight years, with Commissioner Abe Laydon term-limited, and on the red side of the county the Republican primary effectively settles it.

It is a clean contrast. John Diak is a longtime Parker town councilman who also sits on the regional planning board and the E-470 authority, and he runs on having steered serious federal and regional money into the area. He is the credentialed, slightly more moderate infrastructure guy. Jake Bockenfeld is the legacy candidate; his late father was a longtime Arapahoe County commissioner and state representative, and Jake is running explicitly to continue that work, in the small-business, cut-local-taxes lane.

Here is the tension that makes it interesting. At the March assembly, Bockenfeld beat Diak among the party faithful, 194 to 138. That is real base energy and the pull of a known family name. But assemblies are won by the activist core, and the June primary is tens of thousands of mailed ballots with unaffiliated voters as the largest group. That broader, more moderate electorate is exactly where a regionally known name like Diak tends to overperform his assembly share. We would call it a coin flip leaning Diak, with Bockenfeld's path running through base intensity and the family brand. Whoever wins is the favorite over unopposed Democrat Irene Bonham in November, though in a 34-percent-Republican county "favorite" is not the lock it once was.

Governor, Democratic primary: the upset that already happened

If you only watch one statewide race tonight, watch this one. It began as a coronation for U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, who entered with the entire Democratic establishment behind him. It is ending with Attorney General Phil Weiser leading. Every June poll has shown Weiser ahead, and an independent poll back in late May already had him up. At this point the real upset would be Bennet hanging on.

Weiser has consolidated the change-and-youth lane, running better than three to one among voters under 45 and cleaning up with Democrats who think the party has been ineffective. He has campaigned hard on having sued the Trump administration dozens of times as AG, while hammering Bennet for voting to confirm several Trump cabinet nominees. Bennet's firewall is the stuff that tends to win late: an 80-percent name-ID advantage, a large block of older, late-deciding voters, and a pro-Bennet super PAC sitting on more than $10 million, much of it from Michael Bloomberg, ready to flood the final weekend. Colorado ballots arrive heavy at the end, and those late deciders are Bennet's people. Trust the direction here, since the one independent poll corroborates it, but take the exact margins with a grain of salt, because the splashiest numbers come from each side's own pollster. For Douglas County this matters more than you might think: the county's many unaffiliated voters can pull a Democratic ballot, and statewide they are breaking that way this cycle.

Governor, Republican primary: the outsider is winning

The other governor primary flipped the usual script. The establishment pick, state senator Barb Kirkmeyer, is not the frontrunner. Victor Marx is, a first-time candidate and evangelical ministry leader running as a MAGA outsider who has out-raised the entire rest of the Republican field combined and locked down the right with endorsements from Lauren Boebert and Michael Flynn. The only public poll, funded by his own campaign, so discount it accordingly, had him winning big.

The catch is real. A CBS Colorado investigation found roughly 150 of Marx's donors gave over the legal limit, including a $2,000 check from a man who had been dead four years, and Marx took the unusual step of retracting and refiling his entire finance disclosure. The potential fines run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than he has on hand. Both of his Republican rivals said flatly at a June debate that they will not support him if he wins, calling him "unfit" and "a fraud." That is the sort of intraparty wreckage a nominee carries into November. Kirkmeyer's path is the undecided block plus a unified establishment and an anti-Marx ad campaign, but the signal points to Marx. Looming over all of it: former Parker mayor Greg Lopez left the GOP and is running unaffiliated in the general, which could scramble the math if Republicans nominate a candidate this polarizing.

U.S. Senate, Democratic primary: a frontrunner and a thermometer

Incumbent Democrat John Hickenlooper is a heavy favorite for a second term, and the more interesting question is how big a protest state senator Julie Gonzales registers from his left. An independent poll had Hickenlooper up 41 to 34 with a quarter of voters undecided, and the money gap is a chasm, something close to ten to one. Gonzales has run an energetic insurgency built around Gaza, generational change, and affordability; she calls Israel's conduct genocide and fundraises on rejecting AIPAC, which endorsed Hickenlooper. But she has no statewide advertising, and most voters still say they do not know her. Hickenlooper has not so much as shared a stage with her, the classic protect-the-lead move. The number to watch: if Gonzales clears the high 30s, that is a loud warning shot from the party's left that draws national attention even in a Hickenlooper win. The Republican line here is uncontested, with state senator Mark Baisley advancing, and there is a sharp local footnote: Baisley's senate seat is Douglas County's SD-4, and his run for Senate is exactly why that seat is open and competitive this November.

Attorney General: a frontrunner with an asterisk

The attorney general job is open because Weiser left it to run for governor, and it matters locally more than its low profile suggests: consumer protection, the multistate lawsuits that shape gun and water policy, and backup for local law enforcement. On the Democratic side, Secretary of State Jena Griswold is the name brand and the frontrunner, but it is a soft lead. Her own internal poll put her at 46 percent with a giant 35 percent undecided, and her three rivals, Boulder DA Michael Dougherty, former federal antitrust lawyer Hetal Doshi, and workers-rights attorney David Seligman, have spent the race hammering her thin courtroom record. The Denver Post endorsed Dougherty and put it bluntly: you cannot credibly say you will take Trump to court if it would be your first time in one. What keeps Griswold safe is arithmetic, the anti-Griswold vote splitting three ways with no one consolidating it. On the Republican side, El Paso County DA Michael Allen is the heavy favorite, the tough-on-crime prosecutor from the county directly south of us on I-25, against David Willson, who represented Tina Peters and is running on election integrity.

How to follow Tuesday night

1. Polls close 7 p.m. First results usually post within the hour.
2. Watch our live results page, with the local commissioner and HD-44 races up top.
3. Do not expect anything final tonight. Results are unofficial until the canvass, and close races can drag into later ballot drops.

For the full slate, every office and every candidate with our take, start with the Douglas County 2026 ballot guide. We will have a results recap up fast.