Democrat Eileen Laubacher leads Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert by 4,894 votes in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District as of the Colorado Secretary of State’s 4:02 a.m. Mountain posting on Wednesday, November 4. The Associated Press has not called the race. Neither candidate has conceded or claimed victory.
The count so far
Of 343,281 ballots tabulated districtwide:
Eileen Laubacher (D): 168,729, 49.2%
Lauren Boebert (R): 163,835, 47.7%
Douglas Mangeris (L): 10,717, 3.1%
Douglas County is the anchor. It has reported 191,580 CD-4 votes, with Laubacher ahead there 103,482 to 82,393, a 21,089-vote advantage. Laubacher also leads in the Arapahoe and Larimer portions of the district. Boebert leads in Weld, Adams, El Paso, Elbert and the Eastern Plains counties.
Official results: https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CO/127407/
There is no official count of ballots remaining
Colorado’s Election Night Reporting system publishes votes and whether each county has finished its election-night upload. It does not publish a county-by-county inventory of ballots still waiting to be counted. As of 9:05 a.m. Mountain on November 4, none of the 21 counties with territory in CD-4 had posted an outstanding-ballot total.
Every “ballots remaining” figure in circulation, including the ones below, is a model estimate built from expected turnout, not a count from a clerk’s office. The estimates vary widely. AP’s model, as published by NBC, had 83% of the expected vote in. The New York Times had 94%. A third-party tracker had 97%. The disagreement is about final turnout, not about the votes already counted.
The 2024 presidential-year total in CD-4 was 447,807. Midterms typically run 15 to 20 percent lighter, which points to a final total near 365,000 and roughly 20,000 to 22,000 ballots still to be added. That is the basis for the projection below.
Election-night complete does not mean counting complete
A county can report its election-night upload as finished while still holding ballots that will legally enter the tally later. Four categories remain in play:
Ballots received by the 7 p.m. November 3 deadline but not yet fully processed. Larimer County stopped processing after its third posting at 11:41 p.m. Tuesday and resumed Wednesday morning. Its next update is expected by 5 p.m. Mountain today.
Ballots held for signature or identification cure. Counties must send cure notices by November 5. Voters have until 11:59 p.m. November 12 to fix them.
Provisional ballots awaiting eligibility review, also due by November 12.
Military and overseas ballots that were sent by 7 p.m. Election Day and arrive by November 12.
Ordinary domestic mail ballots that arrive after 7 p.m. on November 3 do not count, regardless of postmark.
Douglas County says its post-election updates will include ballots returned close to the deadline, eligible military and overseas ballots, and cured ballots. It last posted at 12:33 a.m. Wednesday and has not announced its next update time.
Douglas County is not all CD-4
On election night Boebert told supporters 50,000 Douglas County ballots had yet to be counted. No county official has confirmed that number. Douglas County is also split between the 4th District and Jason Crow’s 6th District, so a share of any uncounted Douglas ballots belongs to a different race. The Times estimated fewer than 5,000 CD-4 ballots remain in Douglas.
Where the remaining ballots are
Using the Times’ county-level estimates and each county’s current margin, with the Libertarian share held at 3%:
The three largest blocks of uncounted ballots are in the three counties Laubacher is winning. Boebert’s strongest counties are already at or above 95% reported. Kiowa County, where she leads by 71 points, reported 723 ballots cast and has fewer than 100 left.
Net effect of the remaining vote: Laubacher gains roughly 875.
What Boebert needs
Boebert must net 4,895 votes over Laubacher from everything added after the 4:02 a.m. snapshot. The share she would need depends entirely on how many ballots are left:
Any remaining Libertarian votes make the requirement slightly harder. Boebert has won 47.7% of the vote counted so far.
My Projected Final Vote Tally
Laubacher: about 180,100, 49.2%
Boebert: about 174,350, 47.6%
Mangeris: about 11,400, 3.1%
Total: about 365,900
Projected margin: Laubacher by about 5,770 votes, 1.6 points.
Even if late-arriving ballots break 10 points better for Boebert than current county margins, she finishes roughly 3,500 votes short.
The recount line
Colorado orders an automatic recount when the margin is within one-half of one percent of the leading candidate’s total. At current numbers that is about 840 votes. Laubacher’s lead is nearly six times that.
In 2022, the cure and military-overseas period cut Boebert’s lead in the 3rd District from 1,122 votes to 557, and a mandatory recount settled it at 546. That late period moved a few hundred votes. It did not move thousands.
The calendar
November 5: counties must send cure notices
November 12, 11:59 p.m.: cure deadline, provisional review deadline, last day for military and overseas ballots to arrive
November 13: counties must finish tabulating accepted ballots
November 24: risk-limiting audit report due
November 25: county canvass deadline
November 27: final results due to the state
The Secretary of State updates results at least once each weekday by 4 p.m. Mountain through November 12, except Veterans Day.
Prediction
Laubacher wins. The remaining ballots are concentrated in the three counties she is carrying, Boebert’s strongest counties are essentially finished, and the cure and overseas window has never moved a Colorado congressional race by more than a few hundred votes. The margin should widen into the mid-5,000s as Larimer, Arapahoe and Douglas post this week, and it will finish well outside the automatic recount threshold. If the Larimer and Douglas updates on Wednesday do not cut Laubacher’s lead below roughly 2,500 votes, the race is over in everything but the formal call.
DBW
Methodology: vote totals from the Colorado Secretary of State’s 4:02 a.m. MT posting on November 4, 2026. Remaining-vote estimates from The New York Times county table the same morning. Current county margins applied to remaining ballots; Libertarian share held at 3%; midpoints used where the Times listed a ceiling. Deadlines from the Secretary of State’s 2026 election calendar. All figures unofficial.
About the Author
David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.
Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.
Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.
An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.
And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.
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She lost her seat, so that should help.