The race to win Colorado Republicans’ nomination for governor remained too close to call Wednesday, even as first-time candidate Victor Marx took the lead for the first time over state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer.
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Kirkmeyer had led for nearly 22 hours after the polls closed, though she saw her margin slowly melt away as more results trickled in Wednesday. When several large counties uploaded more results around 5 p.m., the advantage flipped to Marx — who led by 2,181 votes as of 9 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
Marx had 39.9% of votes to Kirkmeyer’s 39.4% — a razor-thin margin with just over 500,000 votes tallied so far, according to the AP. Rep. Scott Bottoms, a conservative pastor from Colorado Springs also seeking the GOP nomination, was in third, with 20.7%.
The AP estimated about 92% of votes in the race had been counted.
Kirkmeyer had entered the day with a narrow lead, seemingly built by people who voted earlier in the run-up to Election Day. But Marx steadily gained ground on the veteran lawmaker as late votes filtered in from around the state. By late afternoon, she led by just a few hundred votes.
Marx’s campaign had said earlier Wednesday afternoon that it felt confident that trend would hold and be enough to push the nonprofit leader from Colorado Springs into first place.
Early evening updates came within minutes of each other from El Paso County, where Marx has led, and Denver, where Kirkmeyer has led, among others. Those election offices had spent the day processing tens of thousands more ballots, and they resulted in an overall shift in Marx’s favor when they landed.
Roger Hudson, Marx’s campaign spokesman, said late Wednesday afternoon that he now felt more confident than he had Tuesday night, when Marx told supporters that he could still overtake Kirkmeyer.
“It’s more proof of the fact that those late voters, in-person voters, are Victor Marx voters,” Hudson said.
The AP projected more outstanding ballots were left to count Thursday in El Paso County than in Denver, which was nearing completion and had just 2,000 or so total ballots remaining for all party primaries. But other counties that favored Kirkmeyer, including Arapahoe County, still expected to report more, too.
It’s unclear when a final winner will be called. The state’s automatic recount law would be triggered if the margin between Marx and Kirkmeyer is less than 0.5% of the leading vote-getter’s total. Currently, that’s a little more than 1,000 votes.
In an interview late Wednesday morning, Kirkmeyer said she remained confident, pointing to outstanding ballots in Larimer, Arapahoe, Boulder and her native Weld counties. She led in all of those places, though Marx had pulled ahead in Adams County, maintained a lead in ruby-red El Paso County and comfortably won Mesa and Pueblo counties.
She said that if she could maintain and pad out her support along the Front Range, then those counties “are going to help carry me through to a win in this election.”
“We thought it would be a competitive race,” she said. “I was in session until the middle of May. I couldn’t do a lot of campaigning.”
Map: Who’s leading in the Colorado primary race for governor?
Hudson said that concerns around mail-in voting, which have taken hold among conservative voters amid President Donald Trump’s repeated and baseless claims of election fraud, likely spurred more hardline Republican voters to cast their ballots in person on Election Day. Those would then be among the last votes to be counted.
That trend would make sense for the candidates: Kirkmeyer is a more traditional, fiscally conservative and moderate Republican. Marx has played more to the base, eschewing policy debates in favor of social media outreach and wearing his controversial personal history — which has attracted extensive public scrutiny — on his sleeve.
Whoever wins will take on Attorney General Phil Weiser, the Democratic nominee, in November, after he crushed U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in their primary contest Tuesday.
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