It’s been a dozen years since Colorado’s general election ballot has been as sparse as it will be next year.

Instead of electing a governor, U.S. senator or other statewide executive offices, Coloradans will only be faced with voting for president and the at-large University of Colorado regent seat in 2024, just as they were in 2012.

That’s due to the staggered, six-year terms served by the state’s two U.S. senators, which leaves one in every six general elections without any candidates running for major statewide office at the top of the ticket.

Of course, the ballot will still feature plenty of races in addition to the presidential contest. Up for grabs are Colorado’s eight U.S. House seats – one more than the state boasted in 2012 – as well as legislative, county and district attorney elections, plus CU regent, state board of education and any initiatives or referenda that make the ballot.

A lot has changed in the state politically in just 12 years, though there are strong echoes of the 2012 election as next year’s ballot take shape.

Like in 2012, a Democratic president with upside-down approval ratings in the state will be seeking a second term in 2024, while a couple of targeted congressional incumbents will almost certainly face tough bids for reelection, drawing a national spotlight and millions of dollars in campaign spending to their districts.

Heading into the 2012 election, President Barack Obama had a roughly 40% approval in Colorado in 2011, according to Gallup, after carrying the state by an almost 9 percentage point margin four years earlier.

While the comparison isn’t precise, President Joe Biden, who won the state by a 13.5 percentage point margin in 2020, has had about 42% approval in Colorado since April, according to the Race to the WH site.

Unlike in 2012, however, Colorado’s electoral votes aren’t considered in play next year, with Biden favored to win the state, like the Democratic nominee has in each of the last four presidential elections.

Twelve years ago, three of Colorado’s seven congressional districts were pegged as competitive: the Western Slope-based 3rd District, represented by first-term Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, and the suburban 6th and 7th district, represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman and Democratic U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, respectively.

By the time Election Day was in sight, Tipton had outpaced Pueblo Democrat Sal Pace, the state House minority leader, winning reelection by 12 percentage points. But Coffman and Perlmutter had what appeared to be tight races on their hands.

Ultimately, Coffman squeaked to a third term by a closer-than-expected 2 percentage points over Democratic state Rep. Joe Miklosi, whose narrow loss put a target on the incumbent in the evenly divided district. Perlmutter, however, fended off a spirited challenge from brewery magnate Joe Coors, the GOP nominee, winning by nearly 13 percentage points.

Just two of the state’s eight congressional districts could be up for grabs next year: the slightly reconfigured 3rd District, represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert – who ousted Tipton in the 2020 GOP primary – and the new 8th District, which covers suburbs north of Denver and a chunk of Weld County and is represented by first-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo.

Boebert has already drawn a challenge from Aspen Democrat Adam Frisch, who trailed the Republican by just 546 votes last year in the country’s closest congressional race. This week, Frisch’s campaign said he’s raised $4.4 million through June 30, shattering fundraising state and national records for a House candidate in an off-year. Boebert, who has yet to release her second quarter figures, is head-and-shoulders the most prominent elected Republican in the state and has proven herself a fundraising powerhouse.

Caraveo, who narrowly won election last year by just over 1,600 votes, has yet to draw a challenger, though both parties agree the toss-up seat is crucial to winning the House majority and will be among the most competitive races in the country next year.

After last year’s election, Colorado cemented its blue status as a solidly Democratic state – for the time being, at least – by sweeping the ballot statewide and in nearly every competitive district, a far cry from the deep purple hue the state enjoyed ahead of the 2012 election, when all eyes were on battleground Colorado.

Democrats had been ascendent since the middle of the previous decade, but voters rendered a split decision in 2010, electing Democrats John Hickenlooper to his first term as governor and Michael Bennet to his first full term in the U.S. Senate, with Hickenlooper winning comfortably and Bennet winning by a whisker. At the same time, Republicans won the other statewide executive offices – attorney general, secretary of state and state treasurer – and reclaimed the majority in the state House by a single seat while Democrats maintained a majority in the state Senate.

The 2012 election was shaping up to be a barnburner. It’s no exaggeration that Colorado was the quintessential swing state in a presidential election expected to go down to the wire.

After nearly five decades of voting for the Republican in nine of 10 presidential elections – the exception was when Bill Clinton carried the state in 1992, helped by Ross Perot’s unusually strong third-party candidacy – Colorado had been the tipping-point state in 2008. It provided the electoral votes that pushed Obama past the 270 required to claim the White House.

The concept, popularized by the election data crunchers at Fivethirtyeight.com, describes the state that puts the winner over the edge in the Electoral College after ranking states by the winning candidate’s margin of victory.

It turned out that Colorado would repeat the feat in 2012.

Election observers weren’t surprised.

In June 2011, top Republican strategist Karl Rove predicted as much at a GOP fundraiser in Denver.

“I hate to tell you, but you’re ground zero,” he told donors. “In 2012, as goes Colorado, so goes the nation. You’ve got a lot of work to do.”

A month later, as Obama’s team kicked off a massive early organizing drive across the state, Rick Palacio, the Democratic state chair, made the same point.

“Colorado is definitely a state that is a swing state, probably a prime example of the definition of the swing state,” he said.

Both parties poured tremendous resources into Colorado, though the Republican nomination wouldn’t be settled until late spring, about six months before the election, giving a head start to Democrats working to reelect Obama.

In a bid to have a say in the nominating process, the state GOP moved the party’s 2012 precinct caucuses from their customary date in the first week of March to the first week of February. Democrats, who didn’t have much to decide beyond endorsing Obama’s reelection, stuck with the later date.

Although Colorado Republicans sided with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum at caucuses – he snagged about 40% of the vote, ahead of second-place finisher Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, who got nearly 35% – within weeks Romney had sewn up the nomination.

Obama, Romney and their surrogates made so many campaign swings through the state that summer and fall that by the time they met at the University of Denver on Oct. 3 for the first presidential debate of 2012, they were on a nodding acquaintance and first-name basis with their Colorado organizers.

State voters were routinely treated to dueling rallies, like in mid-September when Obama orated at a park in Golden in the morning and Romney’s son Josh revved up a smaller crowd on a street corner that afternoon just blocks away. As the election neared, Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan filled Red Rocks one evening in late October, and Obama answered by drawing an even larger crowd at Denver’s City Park the next afternoon.

Just over a week before the 2012 election, polls showed Colorado among a handful of states that were too close to call, with competing polls showing the candidates trading the lead, though neither was ahead by more than 1 percentage point. By the time the votes were counted, however, Obama carried the state convincingly, by about 5.5 percentage points.

Ernest Luning has covered politics for Colorado Politics and its predecessor publication, The Colorado Statesman, since 2009. He’s analyzed the exploits, foibles and history of state campaigns and politicians since 2018 in the weekly Trail Mix column.