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Colorado voters will hit the polls on Tuesday to make their voices heard in the state’s 2026 primary elections.

There are several statewide and federal races that pundits have their eye on in the Centennial State, from primaries in toss-up House districts to the race to replace term-limited Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO).

Colorado has not elected a Republican to statewide office in a decade, nor has it voted for a Republican presidential nominee since George W. Bush in 2004. However, state Republican politicos have said the statewide primaries remain just as crucial as the down-ballot primaries for electing a strong top of the ticket to bring out voters.

“Even if the Republican nominee for governor is not winning, they have to be somebody who’s not dragging down the rest of the ticket,” Dick Wadhams, former state Republican Party chair, told Colorado Public Radio. “And that matters a great deal.”

So, here’s which primary races to watch up and down the Centennial State Ballot on June 30.

Socialist and former socialist challenge incumbent Dems in CO-01 and the U.S. Senate race

National Democrats will be the most keenly tuned into the Democratic primary in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, where socialist Melat Kiros is challenging incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), who has held her Denver-area seat for nearly three decades.

Kiros, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America party, is endorsed by big names in the leftist wing of the Democratic Party, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the DSA itself. She has built her platform around priorities like abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, passing Medicare for All through Congress, and an arms embargo on Israel.

Despite DeGette co-sponsoring the House’s original Medicare for All Act, calling for the abolition of ICE, and earning the endorsement of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she is seen as the more centrist candidate in the race compared to Kiros. DeGette has put a focus on her priority of standing up to the Trump administration, which establishment Democrats have highlighted across the board.

This is Kiros’s first time running for public office, but her social media strategy and discontent with the Democratic party’s status quo have made the polls in the primary race tight, as the Colorado Sun reports.

In the deep-blue district, DeGette won the Denver district by over 54 percentage points against her Republican general election opponent in 2024, a victory in CO-01 would be quite the difficult feat for a Republican to pull off. But with the possibility of a socialist on the Democratic ticket, Republicans could eat away at the margin in November. Christy Peterson, the presumptive GOP nominee for the seat, told the Denverite of the general election, “I’m ready for it.”

In Colorado’s Senate race, incumbent Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) is facing a primary challenge from former socialist State Sen. Julie Gonzales, who dropped her affiliation with the DSA when she decided to challenge him in the Democratic primary.

Gonzales told local NBC station 9News that her membership lapsed and she now identifies as a Democrat, while advocating for universal health and childcare and an arms embargo on Israel. Hickenlooper, who is running for his second term in the Senate and served two terms as governor, has prioritized issues like fighting the Trump administration and ICE and lowering costs for Americans.

Hickenlooper has held the lead over Gonzales in the limited available polling on the race, though his margin narrowed in an early June poll, which had him at 41% compared to her 34%.

The winner between Hickenlooper and Gonzales will face off against the presumptive Republican nominee for the seat, State Sen. Mark Baisley, who is running unopposed in the primary. Baisley had previously been a candidate in the GOP gubernatorial primary, but dropped his bid to move to the Senate race, where he felt he was “more suited” as a public official with legislative experience.

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The Race to Replace Polis

With Governor Polis being term-limited, the election to fill his vacancy in the executive has brought two Democratic candidates and three Republicans vying to be Colorado’s next governor.

On the Republican side of the ticket, State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, State Rep. Scott Bottoms, and Marine veteran Victor Marx are dueling it out to see who will face off in the general election. Trump has not issued an endorsement in the race, but Kirkmeyer and Marx each hold major endorsements from Colorado politicians such as Reps. Gabe Evans (R-CO) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), respectively.

Marx holds a lead in the race, according to limited polling, pitching himself as a political outsider who will focus on affordability and public safety issues. But Kirkmeyer and Bottoms have vowed not to support Marx in the general election, calling him a “con man” after he made headlines for saying his stepfather pressured him to kill someone when he was just seven-years-old.

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The Democratic primary has turned into an election about which candidate can best fight the Trump administration, as the New York Times reports. The race comes in the shadow of Trump’s moves to crack down on certain projects in the state, like vetoing a bill to build a water pipeline and moving the Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who has served in the U.S. Senate since 2009, is taking on state Attorney General Phil Weiser, who has sued President Trump many dozens of times across his two terms. Besides taking on Trump, the primary candidates have debated issues ranging from data centers to childcare as the polls tighten to turn the race into a toss-up.

CO-08: the only House toss-up in the Rockies

The only U.S. House race that Cook Political Report considers a toss-up in the Centennial State in 2026 is Colorado’s 8th District, which is known as one of the closest House races in the country.

Incumbent GOP Rep. Evans, endorsed by President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), won his general election race in 2024 to then-incumbent Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-CO) by a 0.8 percentage point margin and 2,449 votes, according to Ballotpedia.

There are two Democrats looking to take on Evans in the November general election: State Rep. Manny Rutinel and former State Rep. Shannon Bird. Rutinel and Bird have focused on fighting Trump and affordability issues, with limited polling yo-yoing between the two candidates.

The outcome of the Democratic primary on Tuesday will determine how Democrats show up to compete in the general election toss-up against incumbent Republican Evans.

Other statewide races to watch: Secretary of State and Attorney General

Colorado voters will also weigh in on several key statewide races, including the elections for the state’s next secretary of state and attorney general.

The secretary of state race has gotten renewed attention after the state’s election process came under a microscope again after Polis commuted the sentence of Tina Peters. Peters, the former Mesa County clerk, was suspended by Secretary of State Jena Griswold due to her election interference efforts in the 2020 presidential election.

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State Sen. Jessie Danielson and Jefferson County clerk Amanda Gonzalez are facing off in the primary to see who challenges GOP nominee James Wiley in the November general election.

In the state’s Attorney General race, Griswold is running against three other Democrats in the primary, including Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, lawyer David Seligman, and former deputy assistant attorney general Hetal Doshi. In the Republican primary, state Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen is facing off against attorney David Willson.