November 13, 2024 10:50 AM UTC

Lauren Boebert's Persistent Underperformance

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• by: Colorado Pols

It’s not us…it’s you.

Republican Lauren Boebert moved across the state in late 2023 because it was clear that she would not have been re-elected to Congress in her home district of CO-03; in 2022, Boebert only managed to defeat Democrat Adam Frisch by 546 votes. Boebert’s cross-Colorado move paid off last week when she was elected to the open seat in CO-04 by a margin that wasn’t as comfortable as it should have been.

While Boebert is ultimately returning to Congress, she proved again in 2024 that Colorado Republicans would be better off with anyone else.

Boebert’s underperformance in CO-04 was enough to earn her the distinction of being named by The Washington Post as one of the worst candidates in 2024, placing her alongside such sad examples as North Carolina Republican Mark Robinson (Governor) and Arizona Republican Kari Lake (U.S. Senate):

Lauren Boebert: The Republican Colorado congresswoman nearly lost in what would have been the most shocking upset of the 2022 midterm elections, narrowly winning a district Trump had carried by eight points. So she moved from the 3rd District to the more rural 4th, in search of safer territory. It worked, but post-“Beetlejuice” and with family drama looming, she again underperformed Trump’s 2020 margin by around seven points. (We don’t yet have presidential margins by congressional district.)

We do know the partisan leanings of both CO-03 and CO-04 because of data provided by the Colorado Redistricting Commission in 2021. The differentials between Boebert and non-Boebert Republican candidates are pretty clear:

The fourth congressional district is the most heavily-Republican district in Colorado. In 2022, former Rep. Ken Buck won re-election in CO-04 by a margin that was pretty close to the partisan lean of the district. In 2024, Republican Jeff Hurd finished a fair distance from the partisan lean of CO-03, but he still performed considerably better than Boebert’s vote margin two years earlier.

The data is also not good for Boebert when you look at overall vote percentage for the Republican candidates in CO-03 and CO-04 over the last two election cycles:

It is undeniable that Boebert underperforms expectations wherever her name appears on the ballot in Colorado. While the fourth congressional district probably won’t be winnable for a Democrat in 2026, these results should continue to give Republicans reason to look for a different candidate to represent them in Congress.