I want to present the results of the November 5, 2024 general election and show why every vote cast really mattered. By now most of us have a general idea of how the election turned out. I thought I’d give a closer look at the results and try to analyze what those results mean.
In Delta County, there were 19,787 ballots cast out of 24,089 registered voters for an 82.14% voter turn-out. The turnout by political party was:
8,753 out of 9,822 registered Republicans voted for an 89% voter turnout.
2,595 out of 2,969 registered Democrats voted for an 87% voter turnout.
8,298 out of 10,803 Unaffiliated voters voted for an 77% voter turnout.
Statewide there were 3,240,201 ballots cast out of 4,048,228 registered voters for an 80.04% voter turn-out. I believe all these numbers are final.
The following are the results of the candidate races, judge retention votes and ballot initiatives. Winners are bolded and if the Delta County winners are different than the district or state-wide winner, the Delta County vote is highlighted.
While Harris/Walz won in the state of Colorado, Trump/Vance won in Delta County and most importantly overall, in the United States. Of the Delta County voters who voted, 98.42% voted in the Presidential race. The latest Federal Election Commission (FEC) report (through 10/16/24) shows that Biden raised over $1 Billion, Harris raised nearly $998 Million and Trump raised nearly $392 Million. I believe this shows that money alone cannot defeat good candidates, good policy and hard work. You’ll notice this trend will continue through most of the rest of the races. An important feature of this Presidential vote is that, because here in Delta County we had over 10,000 votes for the president, we are entitled to 2 Bonus members in the State Central Committee. We had 2 Bonus members back in 2020 to 2022, but we lost them in the 2022 election when we only had 9,753 votes for Heidi Ganahl in the Governor’s race (247 short of the 10,000-vote threshold, per CRS 1-3-103 Party Committees, Section (2) (a). This is another reason that voter turnout is so important.
96.73% of Delta County voters voted the CD3 race. This is another example of money not being able to defeat good candidates, good policy and hard work. As of the October 16, 2024 FEC report, Frisch raised over $18 Million and spent over $16 Million. Hurd raised $2.3 Million and spent over $2 Million. Frisch spent eight times as much as Hurd. This was the 3rd largest amount raised by all House Congressional candidates. I was surprised to learn that. (Boebert had 10,173 votes in Delta County and 163,842 District-wide in the 2022 election. Hurd has 1,768 more votes in Delta County and 24,024 more District-wide. Boebert had 12,937 votes in 2020 or 996 more votes than Hurd in 2024.)
93.82% of Delta County voters voted the State Board of Education CD3 Race. Democrat Ellen Angeles raised $39,724 compared to $9,420 raised by Republican Sherri Wright. Again, showing the truth of good candidates, good policy and hard work defeating money.
92.51% of Delta County voters voted the CU Regent District 3 Race. Robert Logan raised $13,078, and Ray Scott raised $13,591. This is one of the races where the money raised by both candidates was fairly even.
91.90% of Delta County voters voted the CU Regent At-Large Race. Rinard raised $12,643, while Hood raised $209,643. This incredible difference in money raised by the Democrat Elliot Hood – 94% more than Rinard, probably did make a difference in the outcome of this race. This type of race depends on getting your name in front of the voters and money for advertising is the primary way of doing that.
Delta County’s 10,318 votes represent 22% of Catlin’s total votes – the third largest voting bloc in SD5. Catlin’s other totals were: Eagle 1,260; Garfield 12,346; Gunnison 3,907; Hinsdale 340; Montrose 15,088; Pitkin 3,051. Buerger raised $132,027 and Catlin raised $140,031. I was surprised to see that Catlin actually out-raised Buerger.
Delta County’s 10,820 votes represent 26% of Soper’s total votes. The remainder are in Mesa County. Soper raised $21,436.
Delta County’s 3,280 votes represent 11% of Suckla’s total votes – the second largest voting bloc. Suckla’s other totals were: Dolores 1,056; Gunnison 3,240; Hinsdale 291; Montezuma 2,845; Montrose 16,631; Ouray 1,620; San Miguel 1,203. Curry raised $65,474 and Suckla raised $27,875.
Note that Seth Ryan gave notice of his resignation as JD7 District Attorney on September 24, 2024, effective October 31, 2024, and withdrew from the race. The JD7 Vacancy Committee voted to replace Mr. Ryan on the ticket with Anna Cooling. Delta County’s 13,907 votes represent 34% of Cooling’s total votes – the second largest voting bloc. Cooling’s other totals were: Gunnison 5,278; Hinsdale 348; Montrose 17,594; Ouray 2,054; San Miguel 2,036.
Craig Fuller ran unopposed in the election. 71.82% of Delta County voters voted in the County Commissioner District 2 race.
91.21% of Delta County voters voted the County Commissioner District 3 race. Koontz received 12,974 votes in the 2020 election or 72% of the 19,533 ballots that were cast that year. The 11,762 votes in 2024 are 1,212 fewer votes than in 2020; the 6,283 votes cast for Woolf are 1,176 more votes than Koontz’s opponent Jere Lowe received in the 2020 election. There were 1,488 fewer votes cast in the County Commissioner District 3 race in 2024 than in 2020. Woolf raised $4,950 while Koontz was self-financed and reported $700 in expenditures. A definite example of money not being able to defeat good candidates, good policies and hard work.
The Judges – The results of the retention votes for Judges on the Delta County ballot are as follows – Note the winning votes are shown in bold, if the votes in Delta County do not follow the state-wide votes, they are highlighted in yellow:
All the judges up for retention on the Delta County Ballot WERE RETAINED. In fact, statewide all 116 judges up for retention vote were retained. Including Garfield County Court Judge Angela M. Roff, the one judge whose performance commission believed she did not meet performance standards. She was retained by just 45 votes. The closest to not being retained was Judge Milla Lishchuk, the Baca County Court Judge, who came within 31 votes of not being retained. Proving it is VERY HARD to vote a judge out. Monica Marquez, the Supreme Court Justice, who voted to remove Donald Trump from the Colorado ballot received 64% of the state-wide votes to be retained. However, in Delta County more votes were cast NOT TO RETAIN her. Delta County Judge Bo Zeerip received 55.78% of the 15,739 votes cast to be RETAINED. 80.39% of the voters who voted in Delta County cast a vote in this judge retention vote. Most of the judge retention votes were in the 80-81% range to retain. This close vote for Judge Zeerip will hopefully send a message.
Ballot Initiatives – The results of the Ballot Initiatives on the Delta County ballot are as follows, note the winning votes are shown in bold, if the votes in Delta County do not follow the state-wide votes, they are highlighted in yellow:
Delta County voters voted on 95-96% of the ballot initiatives. Indicating that the voters were very concerned about these initiatives, only slightly behind the Presidential race – 98.42% of voters voted in the presidential race. And right in line with the CD3 race at 96.73%. Delta voters voted in line with Colorado voters on ten of the fourteen ballot initiatives. The only exceptions were passing Amendment J (Repeal of the current traditional definition of marriage); passing Amendment 79 (Giving a constitutional right to abortion and eliminating the prohibition of using public funds for abortion and the requirement of parental notification of a minor’s abortion; not passing Amendment 80 (Establishing a constitutional right to school choice for K-12 education); and passing Amendment KK (establishing a 30% excise tax on ammunition and firearms).
Two additional races that you all might be interested in are the CD4 and CD8 races:
Winning the CD8 race, means that Republicans flipped that seat from Democrat to Republican. That gives Republicans an even split here in Colorado in the House in Congress. Republicans hold CD3 - Jeff Hurd, CD4 – Lauren Boebert, CD5 – Jeff Crank and CD8 – Gabe Evans. That helps all of us here in Colorado and it is helping the Republicans in the House to have a majority. Although the amount of the majority is still undetermined as some House races are still being counted.
While we have focused on the three state legislative seats that were on our Delta County ballots (which all three were won by Republicans), the other state legislative races are also important. The Democrats have a near-stranglehold in the state legislature and what they do there greatly affects us here in Delta County. There were 83 state legislative seats that were up for election this year – 18 seats in the Senate and all 65 seats in the House. The current make-up of the legislature is: Senate (35 seats) – 23 Democrats and 12 Republicans; House (65 seats) - 46 Democrats and 19 Republicans. The very large majority in the House, gave Democrats a super-majority. Which means the Democrats were able to pass all their bills in the House without needing any Republicans voting to support the bill. In the Senate, Democrats were within 1 seat of having a super-majority. Keeping the super-majority in the House and picking up one more senate seat would have given the Democrats a veto-proof super-majority in the state legislature. Fortunately, that did not happen. The Republicans held their numbers in the Senate at 12 seats and they picked up 3 seats in the House. This moves the Republicans in the House from a super-minority (Democrats will have 43 seats and the Republicans 22 seats.) The Republicans have 12 seats in the Senate and the Democrats have 23 seats. Obviously, the Democrats still have a majority in both houses AND they still hold the Governors seat, but the Republicans have a little more ability to influence what happens in the legislature. This is one of the reasons that every vote we cast here in Delta County that helped us win our three state legislative seats was so important.
In addition to evaluating the election results, we have done a fair bit of analysis on the voter rolls and the voters who voted. I’ll be putting out a blog next month on that analysis. I think it will be useful in preparing for the next election.
I want to thank all of you who voted in this critical election. I hope you can see how your vote truly did matter. Voter turnout is absolutely critical in winning elections. With Democrats having tremendous sums of money to promote their candidates, and attack ours, we can only win if we work hard in promoting our good candidates and getting more votes than they do. So, thanks to all of you who voted and to all of you who worked so hard to get the vote out and elect our candidates. I also want to thank the 17 Republican election judges and the 3 poll watchers who served during this critical election – thank you for your service! Finally, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving - we have much to be thankful for this Thursday.
Our next DCRCC monthly meeting is going to be on December 3, 2024 at the Surface Creek Community Church in Austin. The meeting starts at 6:00 pm and we try to finish by 7:30 pm.
Hope to see you there.
David Bradford
Chairman, Delta County Republican Central Committee
PS - Remember you can donate to the Delta County Republican Central Committee, by going to our website https://www.deltacoloradogop.com Since we won’t have a headquarters this year, donations are critical in helping build up our bank account so we have funds for supporting our candidates in the 2024 election. An individual donation of $20 is a great small donation. You can also donate in person at our monthly meeting. Thank you! db
Comentários