Election results: Biden, Trump win Colorado. How did Pitkin County votes compare?
Early election results on Tuesday night show President Joe Biden handily winning Colorado’s Democratic Primary with 85% of the vote. The Associated Press called the race for him at 7:06 p.m.
In the Republican primary, former President Donald Trump defeated Nikki Haley with about 61% of the vote and Haley with 36%, according to the Associated Press, which called the race for him at 7:10 p.m.
However, according to unofficial early results in Pitkin County, she leads Trump with 920 votes to 586 with 26% of ballots counted. Biden had 89% of votes (1,725 votes) when initial results were released at 7:18 p.m.
About 7% of voters who submitted ballots chose a “noncommitted delegate” over Biden, according to the initial results. In Pitkin County, 90 voted for “noncommitted delegate.”
Democratic voters were given the chance to choose a noncommitted delegate — essentially a none-of-the-above option — on their ballot. Some liberals have promoted the option as a way to protest Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Unaffiliated voters in Colorado are mailed both Democratic and Republican ballots and are permitted to vote in whichever one they choose. The state Republican Party has unsuccessfully attempted to block unaffiliated voters from voting in primaries in recent years.
As of 3 p.m. on Tuesday, about 34% of the Republican presidential primary ballots cast in Colorado were from unaffiliated voters. About 33% of active voters in the state turned in ballots, according to the 3 p.m. data from the Secretary of State’s office.
The final results from Colorado’s primary will be used to calculate how many delegates from each party each candidate will get from the state for the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
The election results come one day after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Trump appearing on the Colorado ballot. That decision supersedes a December ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that the Republican was disqualified from running for president again because he violated the so-called insurrection clause in the Constitution.
“We conclude that states may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office,” the U.S. Supreme Court’s 13-page opinion said. “But states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the presidency.”
Colorado is included in the list of 15 states that hold their presidential primary elections on the same day, known as Super Tuesday.
Biden and Trump each won Texas, Alabama, Colorado, Maine, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Minnesota and Massachusetts. Biden also won the Democratic primaries in Vermont and Iowa.
Haley’s strongest performance was in Vermont, where she was essentially tied with Trump in early results. But the former president carried other states that might have been favorable to her such as Virginia and Maine, which have large swaths of moderate voters like those who have backed her in previous primaries.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Elliott Wenzler is the Western Slope politics reporter for The Aspen Times and its sister publications in Glenwood Springs, Vail, Steamboat Springs, Summit County, and Grand County.
