They liked Donald Trump, but not as much as they needed to. That’s the analysis from two of the smartest guys in Colorado politics, Robert Loevy and Tom Cronin.

The pair of Colorado College professors analyzed the voter data for an op-ed column in Sunday’s Colorado Springs Gazette. Though he won all three, the Republican nominee could have fared better in the state’s strongest GOP counties. That could have countered the Denver and Boulder’s lean to the left, they proffered.

Trump’s unorthodox campaign style, filled with startling statements and criticism of other politicians, probably had something of a cooling effect on his support in highly urbanized but very conservative El Paso County.

Just to the north of El Paso County lies Douglas County, a distant suburb of Denver. Douglas County dropped its Republican percentage of the vote 7 points between 2000 and 2016 – from 67 percent Republican to 60 percent Republican. Again, that kind of percentage drop in a populous county is severely damaging to a political party.

Hillary Clinton won the state by less than 5 percentage points-136,396 votes out of more than 2.5 million that were cast.

Another way of looking at the campaign season, however, is that Trump did a remarkable job bringing votes back into the GOP fold in the final weeks. Let’s bear in mind the eventual nominee got none of the state’s delegates to the Republican National Committee, and then Colorado delegation walked out in protest of his nomination

And less than a month before the election, polls gave Clinton a commanding lead in Colorado before Trump made repeated visits to the state and cut the gap in half. Clinton had her own enthusiasm gap among Democrats. Bernie Sanders upset Clinton in the Democratic caucus and, later, at the state convention.