The victors immediately became clear in most races as soon as the early results began posting on Tuesday, establishing patterns and themes that held throughout the count. Here’s a summary of who fared well – and who didn’t – in Tuesday night’s primary election.

WINNERS

GOP establishment wing: The choices voters made on the Republican side of the ticket appear to reflect a desire for less highly charged political rhetoric and more pragmatic ideas about issues important to Colorado families. The party notably nominated more traditional candidates in contested statewide and congressional races.     

Unaffiliated voters: Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea, in his victory speech Tuesday night, pointed to what some GOP hard-liners feared ever since state law was changed to allow unaffiliated voters to participate in the major party’s primaries: they could sway the results toward more moderate candidates. O’Dea’s central claim is that unaffiliated voters joined his coalition, and he pledged to keep working for their vote in the general election. Unaffiliated voters — who make up the largest group of voters in Colorado: 1.7 million of the state’s 3.8 million active voters — have broken toward Democratic candidates in the last three election cycles. But they picked up significantly more Republican ballots – about 45,000 more – in this year’s primary, although it remains to be seen whether they will stick with the GOP candidates in November.   

State House Minority Leader Hugh McKean, R-Loveland: McKean handily beat back a primary challenge from Austin Hein, the former communications director for the House GOP caucus. Hein was backed by his employer, the National Association for Gun Rights, an affiliate of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners. RMGO also supported a slate of candidates in Douglas County and Colorado Springs, and all of them lost to candidates backed by the same outside groups that supported McKean. More importantly, at least six of the 11 members of McKean’s caucus who had been most opposed to his leadership won’t return to the Capitol in 2023. That means less divisive rhetoric and a greater focus on ideas, according to McKean. 

Incumbents: All of the congressional incumbents triumphed on Tuesday night, notably U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Silt, and U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, who both faced vigorous challenges and won by significant margins. The other two incumbents who faced primaries, U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, and Ken Buck, R-Windsor, won by wide margins.   

State Senate candidates. Nearly all candidates running for the Colorado Senate scored easy wins in the primary, with only three of the 17 Senate primary races being contested. In those contested races, two of the party nominations went to current lawmakers — incumbent state Sen. Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican, in Senate District 9, and state Rep. Tony Exum Sr., a Colorado Springs Democrat, in Senate District 11, both in El Paso County. The only race featuring two political newcomers went to Republican Tom Kim in Arapahoe County’s Senate District 27. 

LOSERS

Trump-aligned candidates. Several candidates who espoused unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen lost their races. State Rep. Ron Hanks, who attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C. prior to the riot at the U.S. Capitol and who insisted former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, lost to businessman Joe O’Dea in the U.S. Senate primary. Just as notably, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters ended up in second place in the race for Secretary of State. As reporter Ernest Luning noted in his analysis of the results, voters’ rejection of the more aggressively Trump-aligned candidates is even more pronounced in El Paso County, with the establishment Republicans taking between 60% and 70% in nearly every race featuring challenges from upstart candidates who secured spots on the ballot with wins at the county’s GOP assemblies. A similar pattern applied to crowded GOP primaries for open congressional seats in the 7th and 8th districts, where self-described MAGA candidates Laurel Imer and Lori Saine trailed in third place in their respective races.

Democratic meddling in GOP races. Democrats failed to sway Republicans to vote for the more conservative candidates, despite spending millions of dollars in a strategy to persuade the GOP base to nominate what Gov. Bill Owens described as “second tier” candidates who would be easier for the Democrats to beat in the general election. The tactic, which has worked before in Colorado and succeeded this year in Illinois, fell flat.     

Election engagement. In Colorado, only 28.48% of registered voters cast a ballot in the 2022 primary election, according to data from the Secretary of State’s Office. In Denver, only 20.48% of voters turned out — the second-lowest turnout statewide. Adams County had the worst with 19.89%. That is a big dip in participation from the 2020 and 2018 primary elections, which saw 39.96% and 30.39% voter turnout, respectively. 2020, of course, was a presidential election year, and those years typically draw more voters. Democrats seeking reelection to statewide races also faced no opposition, potentially dampening turnout among partisans. However, this year’s turnout is still higher than the voter turnout in primary elections in 2016, 2014 and 2012, during which participation hovered between 15% and 18% statewide.