Lauren Boebert has been in this position before. In 2022, she won re-election by just 546 votes. Four years later, in a different district that Republicans were supposed to own, she is trailing again.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Democrat Eileen Laubacher led Boebert by 5,073 votes in Colorado's 4th Congressional District, according to Colorado Politics. With about 94% of ballots counted, Laubacher had 49.18% of the vote to Boebert's 47.7%. Libertarian Douglas Mangeris had just over 3%. The Associated Press had not called the race.
The gap is narrow, but it is wider than the margin that would trigger an automatic recount.
The reddest seat in Colorado
What makes the race so striking is the ground it is being fought on. The 4th District is considered the state's reddest seat. When the lines were drawn in 2021, Republicans had an average 25-point advantage there. It covers the Eastern Plains and parts of Douglas, Adams, Arapahoe, Larimer and Weld counties, and its population center, Douglas County, has been slowly trending toward purple. Boebert won the seat two years ago by about 11 points. The last Democrat elected to represent it won in 2008 and was voted out after a single term.
In the last week before the election, national forecasters moved the race to "leans Republican," one step from a toss-up. That was a sign Boebert was more vulnerable than the district's history suggested.
A challenger with a different profile
Democrats had added the district to their list of seats in play, though it was a stretch. Colorado Public Radio reported that economic headwinds for Republicans, especially diesel prices and tariffs hitting rural voters, made Democrats unwilling to write it off. They also had a strong candidate with strong fundraising.
Laubacher is a retired Navy rear admiral and a first-time candidate, in the mold of national-security Democrats who have won in other states during Trump's tenure. She is a mother of five who homeschooled some of her children, and a former registered Republican who became unaffiliated before registering as a Democrat shortly before she decided to run. She worked on South Asia at the National Security Council under President Biden.
On the campaign trail she focused on rural areas where Democrats have not fared well. She criticized Boebert's support for the Republican tax and spending bill, saying its Medicaid cuts would hurt rural hospitals, and criticized Trump's tariffs and his decision to go to war with Iran. She also pointed to Boebert's votes against the PACT Act for veterans and against a housing package.
A congresswoman who has changed
Boebert burst onto the political scene in 2020 by defeating Rep. Scott Tipton in the 3rd District, in western and southern Colorado. After her narrow 2022 win, a messy personal stretch and a serious primary challenger, she moved across the state from Rifle to Windsor to run in the 4th District. She won the Republican primary, though by a smaller margin than her predecessors had.
Her close call changed how she worked in Congress. She embraced earmarks she once called corrupt to bring money home, and she started working with Colorado's Democratic senators. One of her bills, the CONVEY Act, a land transfer measure, was signed into law by Biden.
She also broke with her party and, at times, with President Trump. She signed a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files and refused to take her name off it, even after being called to the White House Situation Room. She campaigned for Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who lost his primary. Trump's first veto of his second term was of a Boebert bill, and in the spring he said he was open to a primary challenger and insulted her on social media.
The debate
In their only debate in October, Boebert pitched herself as someone who gets results for the district, saying that when she is loud, towns like Lamar, Burlington and Holyoke are heard. She also made several accusations against Laubacher, including that she was linked to the floating Gaza pier and had worked as a foreign agent for Saudi Arabia. Colorado Public Radio said many of them came without proof, and Laubacher disputed each of them.
What comes next
With the race still open, a few things matter now. Ballots that are still being counted, including late mail and overseas ballots, could move the margin. The AP has not called the race, and until it does, the right way to describe it is that Laubacher leads and Boebert trails. If the gap narrows enough, a recount could come into play.
The race is also part of a bigger night. Democrats won control of the House and the Senate, and in Colorado they also won the governor's race. Even a narrow Boebert loss, or a narrow win, would be a sign of how far the political mood moved against Republicans.
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Sources: Colorado Politics, Colorado Public Radio, KUNC, Colorado Sun, Denver Gazette and the Associated Press, November 3-5, 2026. Results can change as votes are counted.
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