It was supposed to be a horse race. With predictions of a Republican red wave sweeping the nation prior to Election Day 2022, the Republicans in Colorado were hoping to improve their numbers in the Colorado state House of Representatives and perhaps even gain a majority in the Colorado state Senate.

But the political horse race for the state legislature never happened. As a Democratic blue wave swept across the nation as well as Colorado on election night, it was more like a runaway than a horse race. The Democrats increased their numbers in both houses of the Colorado legislature.

The state House of Representatives ended up with 46 Democrats and only 19 Republicans. In the state Senate, where only 17 of 35 seats were up for election, the results were 11 Democrats and a mere six Republicans.

The 2022 general election in Colorado on Nov. 8 offered the first opportunity to have a state legislative election using the new redistricted boundary lines established by a special legislative redistricting committee using 2021 census data. The outcome of the election suggested that the 2021 redistricting had indeed been gerrymandered to favor the Democrats.

In the case of the Colorado State House of Representatives, we added up the total number of votes cast for all the Democratic candidates as well as the total vote for all the Republican candidates. We then figured the percentages. The Democrats received 53% of the total votes cast and the Republicans polled 47%. We then compared those overall figures with the actual numbers of Democrats and Republicans elected through the redistricting.

Thus it was the Democrats polled 53% of the total votes in the state House races but succeeded in electing 71% of the representatives (46 out of 65). Concomitantly, the Republicans polled 47% of the total votes but only elected 29% of the Representatives (19 of 65).

It was a perfect illustration of the way in which gerrymandering – drawing legislative district lines to favor one political party over the other – can distort the results of an election.

There were other lessons about redistricting as well. The redistricting process had designated 30 seats in the Colorado House of Representatives as safe Democratic. That meant that the Democrats, no matter how the overall vote might be trending, would always win that seat. And that is exactly what happened. All 30 safe Democratic seats in the state House of Representatives were won by Democratic candidates.

In the same manner, the redistricting process created 19 safe Republican seats in the state House of Representatives. Here also, all 19 seats did what they were designed to do and voted the Republican candidate into the state House of Representatives.

We think that all 19 safe Republican seats delivering for the Republicans in this election is significant. The Democratic sweep taking place across the nation and in Colorado did not succeed in swaying even one of the 19 safe Republican seats in the Colorado House of Representatives to the Democratic side. It proved that a safe Republican seat is just that – a legislative seat that has been districted so skillfully that the Republican always wins even on a big Democratic night.

And if these safe Republican seats are really safe, as illustrated here, the same applies to the safe Democratic seats. No matter how well things might be going for the Republicans in an election, the safe Democratic seats will stay Democratic.

What is most significant here is that the redistricting process in Colorado fashioned a permanent bias in favor of the Democrats in the Colorado House of Representatives by creating 30 safe Democratic seats and only 19 safe Republican seats. That gives the Democrats a permanent 30 to 19 vote lead in the Colorado House before citizen voting in an election even begins.

In addition to creating 30 safe Democratic seats and 19 safe Republican seats in the Colorado House, the redistricting process designated 16 seats as competitive. A competitive seat is one in which the voting is close between the Democratic and the Republican candidates. A competitive seat can go Democratic in one election but swing over to the Republicans in the next. Competitive seats are often referred to as bellwether seats or battleground seats.

To us the stunning result of the 2022 general election was that all 16 competitive seats in the Colorado House of Representatives were won by Democrats. Instead of dividing more or less evenly between the two major political parties, the competitive seats all went to the Democrats.

It could be argued that nothing represented the great extent of the Democratic sweep in the 2022 elections as much as the election of all 16 Democratic candidates in the 16 House competitive seats.

Some of the races were fairly close, but none were real close (fewer than 100 votes separating the two candidates).

In one sense, it is not surprising that the Democrats won all 16 competitive seats in the Colorado House in the 2022 election. The function of competitive seats is to measure which party is winning in that particular election, and there is no question the Democrats were winning on that Tuesday night.

The results in the Colorado state Senate were similar to those in the Colorado state House of Representatives. The redistricting process created five safe Democratic seats and all five voted Democratic. The six safe Republican seats all voted Republican. The six competitive seats up for election that night all went to the Democrats, just as in the Colorado House.

Amazingly in the 17 state Senate contests, the Republicans actually received more of the total votes cast (51% Republican) than the Democrats did (49% Democratic). Once those votes went through the mill of the Democratic Party gerrymander, however, the Democrats won 65% of the state Senate seats (11) and the Republicans only took 35% (six).

Our overall conclusion is that the state House of Representatives and the state Senate do not accurately represent the interests and intentions of most Colorado voters. The 2022 election results highlighted the extent to which the Colorado legislature is gerrymandered in favor of the Democratic Party and will continue to be that way for the next decade until the new legislative redistricting following the 2030 census.

The Democratic Party bias created by the gerrymandering of Colorado’s state legislature makes the legislature more liberal and progressive than most of the voters in Colorado. We expect this partisan bias to continue into the near future.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy are news columnists who write about national and Colorado politics.