DENVER — Democratic control of Colorado was never in doubt heading into Tuesday’s election. It was only a question of how deep that control would go.

Very deep, it turns out.

The heights of the party’s victories — up and down the ballot, in Congress, and in the state legislature — were stunning, even as the extent still took shape.

Winning six of Colorado’s congressional seats would have been an outstanding night for the party; as it stood late Tuesday night, Democrats were leading in all eight, by varying margins — including in those that were redrawn with heavy Republican advantages following the 2020 census. Including against firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert.

The final party split was still unsettled going into Wednesday, with three races still too close to call and one of them sliding in the Republican’s favor. Not all may go Democrats’ way. But the state’s new, bluer delegation will join what appears to be a strong Democratic majority elected to the U.S. House.

And in the Colorado legislature, Democratic lawmakers were poised, pending final race calls, to win supermajorities in both the state House and Senate to join Gov.-elect Phil Weiser in the Capitol next year.

“It is insane,” said U.S. Rep.-elect Melat Kiros, of Denver, about Democrats’ potential congressional wins nationally. “And it is a massive, massive amount of responsibility, as well.”

Here are takeaways from a sometimes-shocking Election Day.

National dynamics help fuel wins

Colorado’s candidates turned often Tuesday to the national political picture to explain their massive wins: violent federal law enforcement actions, a teetering economy, inflation, the war in Iran, concerns about corruption.

“If nothing else, this was a change election,” State Treasurer-elect Jeff Bridges said. “I know it doesn’t look like that because it’s just more Democrats getting elected to positions formerly held by Democrats, but if you look at the policies of the folks who have been leading the charge in this election, it’s different from what we’ve seen the last eight years.”

In statewide races, Weiser, the two-term attorney general, was on the brink of breaking the modern state record for margin of victory in a gubernatorial race. And though three of the Republican-held congressional seats remained too close to call late Tuesday, Democrat Manny Rutinel easily beat freshman Rep. Gabe Evans in what was supposed to be Colorado’s true battleground, the 8th Congressional District.

The day’s results were a near-total victory for Colorado Democrats and their liberal allies, who joined with their national peers in running riot against Republicans.

Big-ticket ballot measures, which will fundamentally reshape the state’s financial structure, were leading Tuesday night — though a tax overhaul was still too close to call — while a deep-pocketed conservative advocacy group weathered body blow after body blow at the ballot.

More than majorities, the Democrats elected will also bring different governing philosophies to both the state and U.S. capitols. How that manifests, and how the different wings of a surging Democratic Party govern together, remains to be seen.

The full scale of their wins Tuesday is not fully clear yet, either. But it appears to be sweeping.

Liberal momentum helps downballot — but not everywhere

For those surging Democrats, Colorado’s many ballot measures are turning out as a slightly more mixed bag.

The two most impactful proposals on the ballot — $500 million in additional school funding through Proposition NN and a progressive income tax through Amendment 87, which would raise taxes on the state’s highest earners — were both leading late Tuesday. Amendment 87’s margin was still very tight, but approval was leading despite the measure’s backers being sharply outspent. Proposition NN, though, passed handily.

If both pass, they would be enormous victories for their liberal backers, with seismic implications for the state of Colorado.

But Propositions 134 and 135, which target medical services and sports participation for transgender youth, both also appeared set to pass, with the margins still narrow and vote-counting continuing. And the conservative-backed Proposition 132, which would tighten penalties for fentanyl possession, was leading by more than 100,000 votes early Wednesday morning.

Erin Lee, a conservative activist whose group backed 134 and 135, said the trans measures’ potential passage— along with the clear success of another proposal related to child trafficking — “are the best thing coming out of Colorado tonight, and possibly the entire nation.”

Kiros, in contrast, said victories for 134 and 135, while Democrats swept elected offices, would be “the perfect example of just how money and misinformation and fear-mongering succeed on our ballots.”

A terrible night for Advance Colorado

Advance Colorado’s streak of conservative ballot box successes appeared to come to a screeching halt Tuesday night.

Of the six ballot measures the conservative dark-money group put up, only the fentanyl measure was on track to pass. Amendment 85, which would change rules for ballot language to require that it be simpler, had a narrow majority in favor late Tuesday but was well short of the 55% threshold needed to make its way into the state constitution.

What’s more, two measures that Advance Colorado opposed — Amendment 87 and Proposition NN — were both ahead, even if 87’s lead was narrow.

Michael Fields, Advance’s president, did not respond to a request for comment about the broader results.

Heading into this cycle, liberals looked at the group like a kind of Darth Vader. It had forced special legislative sessions, defeated Democratic-backed measures and directed state spending. But that also meant it attracted attention, and unlike in past years, Democratic and liberal opponents mounted a concerted effort to highlight its influence — and its opaque backers — and to urge voters to oppose its measures en masse.

Chris deGruy Kennedy, a leader with the pro-Amendment 87 campaign, argued that Advance Colorado failed because its proposals weren’t in line with voters.

“They had plenty of resources for all of their ‘Yes’ campaigns,” he said, “and the voters just weren’t there.”

Colorado GOP finds a new low

Where in the world do Colorado Republicans go from here?

After midnight, the party’s nominee for governor, former ministry leader Victor Marx, trailed Weiser by 27.5 percentage points. Mark Baisley was losing his U.S. Senate bid by nearly 25 points. If Tuesday night’s results hold, Republicans are at risk of losing all four of their congressional seats in the state — although in the closest one, U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd pulled ahead of Democrat Dwayne Romero overnight, with the margin razor-thin. Boebert and Rep. Jeff Crank were down by larger margins to Democrats Eileen Laubacher and Jessica Killin, respectively.

The party also has lost all four statewide constitutional offices and is headed for superminority status in both the House and the Senate. Then there’s the beating taken by Advance Colorado, the last bastion of tangible conservative power in the state in recent years.

This drubbing has a few fathers. Colorado is, undoubtedly, a blue state. It was a terrible night for Republicans nationwide. The state GOP is penniless and battered. Conservatives had worried that Marx’s weak campaign would kneecap Republicans up and down the ballot, and they were probably right.

President Donald Trump, for his part, has never been popular here and has long acted as an anchor around Colorado Republicans’ necks, even before his return to office last year.

“Mr. President, you would be more effective if you would just shut the (expletive) up,” Rep. Ryan Gonzalez, a Republican who lost his Greeley-based state House seat by 20 percentage points, wrote on social media.

Some of those woes are circumstantial, and the good news is that it’s hard to imagine how it could get worse for Republicans here. Maybe things will improve when Trump’s shadow fades away. There is still very serious conservative money in the state, both for ballot campaigns and a longer-term rebuild.

But that will take patience, discipline and a unified effort that the often-fractured party has not demonstrated it can maintain. And in the meantime, it faces at least two more years in the freezing cold.

Denver voters show out for progressives

In Denver races, voters delivered major wins for progressive candidates. Kiros herself took a commanding victory, winning nearly 4 in 5 votes in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, as of midnight, after unseating 15-term U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the June primary.

Unaffiliated candidate Shimon Blau, who entered the race after Kiros won the primary and took issue with the democratic socialist’s comments on Israel and the war in the Gaza Strip, received less than 6% of the vote — less than half what Republican Christy Peterson garnered.

A progressive candidate also won Denver’s special election to fill a vacant City Council at-large seat. Melissa Mejía — a member of the Denver chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America — dominated the results, receiving far more votes than any of the other nine candidates, at nearly 29%. There will not be a runoff.

Monica Martinez, a business-backed Democrat who received significantly more campaign donations than Mejía, was the next-closest competitor with just under 17% of the votes cast. Three members of the council endorsed Martinez and one endorsed Mejía.

That race had a major undervote, with 49,626 people who submitted ballots not choosing any candidate for the council contest as of late Tuesday. That was more than the 49,166 people who voted for Mejía.

Denver voters also approved a ban on foie gras, an initiative supported by the animal activist group Pro-Animal Colorado. That measure had the support of two-thirds of voters.

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