Among the many surprises on Election Day was Republicans’ amazingly focused and effective ground game. While Donald Trump didn’t take the state over Hillary Clinton, and Republican Darryl Glenn couldn’t unseat incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet in the U.S. Senate race, the GOP far outperformed polls and overcame internal divisions on Election Day.

Trump, after all, had gotten none of the state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention last summer, and the Colorado delegation famously walked out in protest of his nomination.

Democrats, meanwhile, had boasted of opening more field offices and operatives in the field for months. Republicans had said little beyond that they had what they needed, and it was enough.

As it turned out, organization, ground game and Donald Trump’s (and his children’s) constant presence in the state-all helped raise fortunes of Republicans down the ticket on Election Day, consultants and party officials said in a conference call debriefing with the media Thursday afternoon.

Trump had six rallies in Colorado in the last five weeks of the campaign. Hillary Clinton was here once.

Trump and Glenn trailed by double digits in polls throughout nearly all of the campaign before they narrowed in the final days.

Trump lost by 4.8 percent, but state party chairman Steve House pointed out that the 5.17 percent that went to Libertarian Gary Johnson and the 1 percent for unaffiliated candidate Evan McMullin were conservative voters-implying they probably helped down-ballot Repubicans.

Glenn lost by 5.6 percent but collected 13,194 more votes in Colorado than Trump did.

The party retained a majority in the state Senate, elected a University of Colorado regent, Heidi Ganahl, and re-elected Mike Coffman and Scott Tipton to the U.S. House in races expected to be more challenging.

The GOP ground game in Colorado has taken “a big leap forward” in the election this year and in 2014, said Ian Lindemann, state director for the Republican National Committee.

“We’ve really been proud of our team and the things we’ve been able to accomplish,” he said.

State party chairman Steve House cited the good use of data to forecast where they needed people on the ground and how many.

“I think that’s changing elections going forward in the sense that it’s not about how many offices and how many people, but how targeted you are in where you put your resources,” he said

Cinamon Watson of Blueprint Strategies in Denver was a consultant to Coffman’s 9-point win over state Sen. Morgan Carroll in the 6th Congressional District. She said there was an unprecedented partnership between the campaign, the RNC and the state party.

“It really certainly made a difference,” she said. “It’s no secret that Mike Coffman faced one of his toughest races to date. The attacks were prolific, there was a lot of money spent against him and they threw everything but the kitchen sink at us sometimes.

“The big piece of our success, though, was our commitment to a ground game, and I can brag a little about the congressman and say nobody works harder than Mike.”

Michael Fortney and Andy George with the Denver-based firm Clear Creek Strategies helped engineer Tipton’s 14-point shellacking of former state Sen Gail Schwartz in the 3rd Congressional District.

The district is 54,000 square miles of rural communities across the western and southern parts of the state, requiring TV ads in three Colorado markets and one in New Mexico.

“Because the district is so expensive we really needed to rely on state party and RNC infrastructure to help us build our turnout operation,” Fortney said. “And they did a fantastic job this year. Everywhere I went when I was in districts from Pueblo to Grand Junction to Montrose the phones were manned and the offices were buzzing, and those volunteers don’t get there by themselves. Those volunteers are recruited. Those volunteers are identified.”

He said the RNC and state built inroads in communities early “and we really saw that pay off.”

Ryan Lynch, a former executive director and insider to the state party, was a consultant on the successful state Senate campaigns of Jack Tate and Kevin Priola, as well as House member of Cole Wist,

“I was fortunate to have three exceptional candidates who really put in the time and effort necessary to win these races,” he said.

A loss in any one of them would have shifted power from the Republicans and given the Democrats control of the legislature and the governor’s desk.

“They exercised message discipline throughout, and I feel very fortunate to have worked with them,” Lynch said.

Dustin Olson of Olson Strategies had the line of day.

“To borrow a term from President-Elect Trump, I would say the Republican Party turnout operation this year was big league,” he said. “Having done races in numerous states, in particular Colorado and Ohio, I have to say this is the most cohesive party turnout operation since probably the Bush re-election in 2004.”