Lauren Boebert has lost her seat in Congress to Democrat Eileen Laubacher, CNN projected Monday, closing out one of the biggest upsets of the midterms in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, the most Republican district in the state.
Laubacher, 58, is a retired Navy rear admiral who served more than three decades and later worked on the National Security Council. With about 98% of the vote counted, she led 48.8% to 47.9%, a margin of 3,237 votes, according to CNN. Libertarian Douglas Mangeris took about 3.3%. The Associated Press had not called the race as of Monday afternoon.
On paper, this seat was never supposed to be in play. The Republican who held it before Lauren Boebert routinely won by more than 20 points, and Boebert carried it by about 11 points two years ago. In the final week before Election Day, national forecasters moved the race to “leans Republican,” one step away from a tossup.
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Boebert only landed in this district because she left a close fight. In 2022, she held onto her old Western Slope seat by fewer than 600 votes, then switched to the 4th District, which covers the Eastern Plains, Douglas County and the Loveland area, and called it a fresh start. Trump endorsed her again in the days before the election.
Laubacher ran on affordability and buried Boebert in fundraising, pulling in nearly $14 million to Boebert’s roughly $1.2 million.
The count swung for days. At one point Thursday, Laubacher’s lead shrank from 2.2% to 0.65% before growing again. Once Weld County, Boebert’s strongest county, finished counting, the remaining ballots came largely from Arapahoe, Douglas and Larimer counties, where Laubacher was winning.
Lauren Boebert is not conceding. Her campaign attorney, former Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler, said the campaign is “investigating some very unusual voting patterns” and expects the race to head to a recount “one way or another.” He did not say what those patterns were, and the campaign has not formally requested a recount.
A recount is not automatic here. Colorado only pays for a recount when the gap between the top two candidates is 0.5% or less of the leading candidate’s vote total. In this race, that works out to about 921 votes, and Laubacher’s lead is more than three times that. Boebert can still request one, but her campaign would have to pay for it, and it would have to be finished by December 8.
Boebert also got the rule wrong in a fundraising email, telling supporters the race would go to an automatic recount if the margin was 0.5% or lower. As Colorado Politics pointed out, the threshold is 0.5% of the leading candidate’s votes, which is a much smaller number than half a percentage point.
Paid recounts in Colorado have rarely changed much. In 2022, Tina Peters paid for a recount after losing the Republican primary for secretary of state, and both candidates picked up 13 votes, leaving the result exactly where it was.
