With less than a percentage-point difference in votes, Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo on Sunday conceded her bid to continue representing Colorado’s 8th Congressional District to Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans.
“It’s been the honor of a lifetime to serve the people of Colorado’s 8th District,” Caraveo said in a statement. “I came to Congress to get things done, and have spent the last two years working to find common ground and bipartisan solutions to the most pressing issues facing our community. … While this isn’t the outcome we had hoped for, the work is not over.”
All three counties that make up Colorado’s 8th Congressional District had concluded ballot counting by late Saturday night, election officials said.
Larimer and Weld counties both reported they had completed their initial ballot counts Saturday afternoon and counting in Adams County wrapped up just before midnight.
The latest results had Evans winning 48.98% of the final count with 162,022 votes, compared to Caraveo’s 48.19%, or 159,426 votes, according to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. He held a 2,596-vote lead on Sunday.
“I am incredibly humbled to be chosen as the next Congressman for Colorado’s 8th,” Evans, of Fort Lupton, said in a written statement on Sunday. “It is an honor to be entrusted with the job of representing you and your families, and I am ready to fight back for a better direction for all Coloradans.”
As of Sunday afternoon, Evans’ victory was set to give Republicans 214 seats in the House, according to The Associated Press. They need 218 to maintain their majority, and several tight races across the country remained unresolved.
Evans, 38, an Army veteran and former Arvada police officer, campaigned on hot-topic issues including free speech, gun rights and American security. In millions of dollars of campaign and outside TV ads, his and Caraveo’s race also turned on abortion access, border security and other issues that played out across the country.
Despite previously opposing abortion in all cases, except when the life of the mother was at risk, Evans said he now supports exceptions for rape and incest and will not support a national ban if it comes to a vote in Congress.
His campaign also focused heavily on immigration and securing U.S. borders, combatting the “Colorado crime wave” and fentanyl, school choice and increased education funding, accessible health care, and promoting the domestic production of food and energy.
Evans pulled ahead of incumbent Caraveo late Friday for the first time since election night, but both candidates were unsure whether the remaining votes left to be counted in Adams County would flip the race back in Caraveo’s favor.
While thousands of votes remain set aside for curing — where voters provide identification, add a missing signature to their ballot or correct other critical errors — Caraveo conceded the race Sunday. The National Republican Congressional Committee issued a statement declaring victory for Evans.
“Gabe Evans is a fighter for the American Dream who will work tirelessly on their behalf in Congress, and we look forward to seeing the valuable results Congressman-elect Evans will deliver for Coloradans,” NRCC spokeswoman Delanie Bomar said in the statement.
The final vote count, including cured ballots from all three counties, likely won’t surface until Thursday.
The deadline for voters to cure their ballots is Wednesday — the eighth day after election day — and county clerks have until Thursday to finish counting ballots cast in the 2024 election, according to state officials.
Colorado’s 8th District, the state’s newest congressional district, was created during the 2021 redistricting process and designed to be an evenly split swing district.
It was the state’s first new seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in two decades, and it includes fast-growing suburban neighborhoods as well as agricultural land and oil and gas territory between Greeley and Commerce City. Caraveo’s residence is in Thornton, while Evans has a farm in southern Weld County.
Caraveo won the district’s first election in 2022 by a narrow margin of less than a percentage-point difference in votes from Republican candidate state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer — similar to the current margin that allowed Evans to secure his win this year.
Kirkmeyer conceded the race in 2022 when Caraveo held a 1,522-vote lead out of more than 200,000 ballots counted. The eventual margin settled at 1,632 votes.
That year, a Libertarian candidate drew many times that margin. This time, Libertarian nominee Eric Joss dropped out in early September and endorsed Evans, a move that was seen by some observers as improving the GOP candidate’s odds in a close race.
Caraveo was the first representative to win in the new district and her victory secured her status as Colorado’s first Latina congressional representative. Evans is also Hispanic.
The 8th District has the heaviest Latino concentration of any Colorado congressional district, with nearly 40% of the population identifying that way.
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