CO Election Results: Biden Projected Winner In Presidential Race

COLORADO — Former Vice President Joe Biden is the projected winner of the presidential race in Colorado, according to the Associated Press.

Colorado — a so-called "shade of purple" state with a 6-year history of successful mail-in voting — saw record-breaking voter turnout for the general election, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said.

Since President Donald Trump's 2016 election, Colorado has shifted to the left, and Biden received his nine electoral votes from the state Tuesday, AP reported.

Colorado Presidential Election Results:

Joe Biden: 1,484,388

Donald Trump: 1,048,639

>> Hickenlooper vs. Gardner — view race results here.

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"We feel good about where we are — we really do," Biden said in a speech after the Colorado results were announced. "We believe we're on track to win this election."

Trump lost in Colorado by just under 5 percentage points in 2016, but his campaign staff and volunteers have continued to canvass and hold events in our state and other swing states.

Trump visited Colorado Springs for a rally in February at the Broadmoor World Arena. Hundreds of people with tents and sleeping bags lined up in freezing temperatures more than 24 hours before the event to get one of the free tickets for the rally.

Biden also paid Colorado a visit in February — he spoke at a fundraising event in northwest Denver at the home of former U.S. Senator Ken Salazar.

But then the coronavirus outbreak hit our state, and the two candidates' campaigns took different paths — the Trump campaign has relied on in-person canvassing in Colorado, while the Biden campaign relied on virtual events, phone calls and text messages to connect with voters in our state.

Ivanka Trump visited Littleton in July to highlight the administration's conservation and affordable child care efforts. She stopped by Lockheed Martin as part of her nationwide tour promoting workforce development.

Both campaigns have worked closely with the Senate campaigns for John Hickenlooper and Sen. Cory Gardner. Colorado is one of several states that have pivotal U.S. Senate races — if Democrats can flip those seats, they can take control of the Senate.

Gardner and Trump had an uphill battle in Colorado — over the past decade, Colorado's demographic has shifted — many progressive millennials moved into the state, and it drifted to the left.

Colorado women were leaning "overwhelmingly" blue ahead of Election Day, according to a poll conducted by the nonpartisan American Politics Research Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. The women's vote tipped the state toward leads for Biden, Hickenlooper and Democratic congressional picks, the poll showed.

Anand Sokhey, the research lab's director, said her team's research indicated "a pretty consistent Democratic lead across all of these races."

"But the gender gaps are enormous," the director said.

The women's vote didn't tip the scales too heavily, however — Colorado appears to be neither a bright blue state nor a bright red state, but rather "some shade of purple," researchers said.

Only a third of female voters in Colorado support Trump, according to the research lab.

"You have seen a growing division for a while in which female voters are responding negatively to Trump's leadership and rhetoric, and that is spilling down to some of the other races," Sokhey said.

"It appears the female vote could play a very important part in this election."

The research lab's survey of 800 Coloradans was conducted Oct. 5-9, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.55 percentage points. While there have been more recent polls, the CU Boulder poll is the highest-rated recent survey on the FiveThirtyEight website.

Around 71 percent of respondents said they are worried about violence on or after Election Day in other parts of the country.

"We have seen an uptick in rhetoric and hyper-partisanship and that has people concerned," Sokhey said.

That "rhetoric" could also influence unaffiliated voters in the general election, according to Magellan Strategies. After the 2018 midterm elections, the research firm found that more than half of unaffiliated voters disapproved of the job Trump is doing.

The Republican firm called Trump's approval rating among all unaffiliated voters in Colorado "toxic."

"There is no question that Donald Trump had a negative impact on Republican candidates, with 34% of unaffiliated voters saying they were less likely to vote for a Republican candidate because of his influence," the firm said in a statement.

"In the past 20 years never has one political party been so overwhelmingly rejected at every level of representative government by the electorate."

In the poll conducted by the CU Boulder research team, a series of questions asked voters about their confidence in the electoral process. Two thirds of those surveyed said they had confidence in the mail-in voting system, and most agreed that the coming elections will be "conducted fairly and accurately."

Yet only 57 percent agreed that if their preferred candidate did not win, they would view the winner as legitimate.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said that one of her top concerns for the Nov. 3 election is "foreign interference."

"Foreign adversaries are conducting influence operations to try to undermine Americans' confidence in the electoral process, and states must act," Griswold said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency issued warnings in September about foreign actors that spread misinformation on fake websites, alter existing legitimate websites, send fraudulent emails and release articles in fake online journals.

Griswold's office launched social media campaigns and a new website to combat misinformation. Her office also created the Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit to help combat emerging cyber threats.

"Colorado is considered the safest state in which to cast a ballot, and we continually innovate to maintain our leading cyber preparedness," Griswold said.