December 15, 2025 02:40 PM UTC

Evans Will Fight for his Political Life Next Election, With Expected Referendum on Trump, Say Experts

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• by: Casey Quinlan

(Just call him Mark — Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Originally posted at the Colorado Times Reecorder

Colorado Congressman Gabe Evans, a freshman Republican running for reelection next year, faces an extremely tough race as one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress, election experts tell the Colorado Times Recorder.

Political researchers and analysts said that a combination of the district being more purple and blue collar than other districts, a challenging economy, and all signs pointing to the midterms being a referendum on President Donald Trump make this race a toss-up.

A model for forecasting elections that looks at presidential approval and personal disposable income found that, as of July, the Republican Party will likely lose 28 seats in the midterms. But one of the forecasters, Michael Lewis-Beck, professor of political science at the University of Iowa, said that based on “how things have evolved” since the summer, “the negative result is more likely to be greater.”

Both the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter and Sabato’s Crystal Ball place Evans’ race in the toss-up category.

Matt Foster, professorial lecturer at American University in Washington, said, “The question is whether [Evans’ 2024] victory was more enthusiasm for Trump or dissatisfaction with Biden. I do believe it’s more the latter. If that dissatisfaction continues under a Republican president, candidates in these swing districts are going to be the first on the chopping block.”

Evans’ Colorado Congressional District (CD8), which was drawn before the 2022 elections, has the largest percentage of Hispanic voters of any district in Colorado, at 39%. Election experts consider it a very competitive district, with 28% of registered voters being Democrats, 25% being Republicans, and 44% being unaffiliated with either party.

Fifty percent of CD8 voters chose Trump in the 2024 presidential election, over 48% who voted for Harris. It’s also very working class, election watchers tell the Colorado Times Recorder, meaning that economic messages need to resonate strongly with voters as tariffs and a cooling job market create economic uncertainty in the region.

Will Evans Be a Strong Candidate Next Year?

In some ways, election experts say Evans should be a strong candidate to win re-election. He has a military background and is the grandson of a Mexican immigrant in a heavily Latino district and in a state where there are several major military installations. As the incumbent, he will likely receive major support from the national Republican Party.

“On paper, he has the right profile for the seat, but he’s going to have a tougher political environment to run in than he did last year, and he barely won,” said Erin Covey, U.S. House editor at The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, a nonpartisan political report. Evans won his 2024 race by less than a percentage point over Democrat Yadira Caraveo.

But he also faces some major disadvantages. If this election is a referendum on Trump, and this becomes a liability next November as it appears to be now, has Evans done enough to differentiate himself from the president?

Evans voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which funded Trump’s mass deportation program and cut Medicaid, which will increase medical care costs for everyone in Colorado and cause over 100,000 people in the state to lose Medicaid coverage.

When the Big Beautiful Bill passed, Evans touted it as “bold” and “commonsense” and has been defending it vehemently ever since, even staging a news conference with fellow Republican Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to praise the law.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill is a bold, commonsense blueprint for how to secure the border, lower costs for families, crack down on dangerous illegal immigrants, and give local law enforcement the tools needed to keep our communities safe,” he stated in a news release

He has opposed the extension of Obamacare healthcare subsidies, which could cause tens of thousands of Coloradans to lose their health insurance, and he made claims that people who make half a million dollars could qualify for a tax credit, which Colorado healthcare advocates have disputed.

Although he’s an incumbent, Evans doesn’t have a long record of policy wins under his belt to show voters, compared to other vulnerable Republicans across the country, election experts said. The wins he does have, which include tax breaks for the very rich and cuts to major social programs and healthcare, may not play well in his very purple and blue-collar district.

Andrew Baumann, partner at Global Strategy Group, a public relations and research firm that has advised several Democratic politicians, said he believes Evans won’t necessarily be able to message his way out of those votes.

“He not only voted for the Big Beautiful Bill, but he was a vocal supporter of it, and he has very much named it as tax cuts doing good for the people of the district, but people of that district are not stupid,” Baumann said. “They know it was a tax cut for millionaires and there are not a lot of millionaires in Colorado-8 but what there are a lot of in Colorado-8 are people on Medicaid, people that need ACA subsidies, people who are going to be really hurt by the votes that Evans has taken, and it’s going to be hard for him.”

Whether Evans’ office survives the midterms may depend on how solid the Democratic opposition is, experts explained. There are several Democratic candidates running in the primary, but the two who raised the most money as of October were Colorado state Reps. Manny Rutinel and Shannon Bird, according to Axios.

Election watchers say that Republicans are probably hoping that they can paint the Democratic candidate as too left-wing for the district and describe Evans as the safe choice. Experts were divided as to whether a more progressive candidate could win against Evans in 2026, with some saying the district leans too conservative and others explaining that it may not make a difference if voters are more likely to choose candidates by party in the midterms.

“Rutinel is one of the leading candidates that Republicans think they they’d like to run against him because they see him as sort of a left-wing candidate, but I think we’re also in a time where particularly House elections, are kind of parliamentary in the sense that it’s party driven and the district is a very obvious target for Democrats,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a newsletter and website that provides political analysis. “I think it’s going to get a ton of spending, and I think Gabe Evans has to hope the environment isn’t as bad as it was in the [2025] November election.”

How Do the Economy and Immigration Policy Impact the Race?

Evans has used fairly draconian language when describing how he’ll crack down on immigration. It was a major focus of his 2024 campaign, when he laid blame on  Caraveo for undocumented immigration.

When discussing his support for a potential ICE detention center in his district, Evans said in August, “We’ve still got a long ways to go to be able to find these drug dealers, these cartels, these gang bangers, these people that are illegally in our country and committing other heinous crimes…”

Election experts and researchers say that may not be the activating issue for voters in 2026 that it was in 2024, particularly now that only 30% of Americans said they want immigration reduced over the summer compared to 55% in 2024, according to a Gallup poll.

“In some ways, I think that now that the Republicans are in charge and they’re seen as cracking down on illegal immigration, that has in some ways been popular, but there have also been instances where the public has viewed the president as maybe going too far,” Kondik said. “In some ways, by maybe addressing the issue, it may be less salient as an electoral stance.”

Baumann said that he doesn’t think the administration’s approach to immigration policy, with numerous videos of federal agents’ arrests of people driving with their kids or, in some cases, of U.S. citizens, will be popular within the heavily Latino district.

“Deportation policies of the Trump administration are hugely unpopular,” he said. “Voters, including Hispanic voters, who are so important in the 8th, correctly think that these policies are not targeting criminals, that they are broad and expansive and targeting, as one person told me in a focus group in a heavily Hispanic district a couple months ago, that they’re ‘targeting grandmas and gardeners and not gangsters.’ That doesn’t play.”

The most motivating factor in the 2026 election will likely be the same top issue as the 2024 election — the economy, say experts. Although the unemployment rate is low by historical standards, layoffs are increasing, and the hiring rate is also very low. A December report by Bankrate found that the typical U.S. household can’t afford 75% of homes on the market. Americans are still frustrated by high grocery prices. Fifty-five percent of those polled by Politico Poll who said groceries were difficult or very difficult to afford blamed the Trump administration, followed by a near-even split between assigning responsibility to Biden and their state government.

Trump appears to be making some of the same mistakes Biden and, later, Harris arguably made, if not worse, some election watchers say, by not doing enough to validate people’s concerns about the economy. He’s claimed that there is no such thing as an affordability problem for most Americans, calling it a “hoax.” Unless something significant changes between now and next year, these economic conditions and Republican messaging failures could be a problem for Evans if voters associate him with them.

“The election is almost certainly going to be a referendum on the Trump administration and Republicans’ control of Congress, and that puts you automatically in a defensive position,” Covey said. “We don’t know what state the economy is going to look like 11 months from now, but if it’s similar to what it is now, that bodes poorly for Republicans because obviously the issue of affordability is number one in voters’ minds.”