Lauren Boebert loses ground in final days before election

Rep. Lauren Boebert has lost some ground in her bid to retain Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, according to the latest political analysis.

The Republican and ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump won the Centennial State’s 3rd Congressional District in 2022 by a razor-thin margin of 546 votes. With that win, Boebert switched her focus to her candidacy in the neighboring 4th District, where she intends to fill the seat left by Republican Rep. Ken Buck, who retired this year.

The district is the most Republican in the state, according to the Cook Party Voting Index last year, which gave it an R+13 rating, compared with the third district’s R+7 rating. The last time a Democrat defeated Betsy Markey in the 4th District was 2008.

While combined polling data from FiveThirtyEight and The Hill show Boebert favored to win and enjoying Trump’s support, her condition appeared to take a sharp turn for the worse in the days before voters went to the polls, according to the Cook Political Report.

On Friday, a nonpartisan polling firm upgraded the race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” Boebert still has a slight lead, although The New Republic reported that “that appears to be due mostly to the heavily Republican makeup of the district rather than any tactful campaigning by Boebert.”

Newsweek Boebert’s team has been contacted for comment.

Boebert’s Democratic challenger is Tricia Calvarese, a former speechwriter for the National Science Foundation. Calvarese said Boebert “melted” during a September debate between the pair, where the Republican was challenged over votes against veterans’ benefits.

Calvarese wrote on X that Boebert was “floundering while trying to protect her disgraceful reputation among veterans,” adding that she had “no explanation for why she missed the deciding votes in the House.”

According to OpenSecrets, Calvarese was buoyed by the news that she had raised more than half a million dollars in the first half of October. Her Oct. 16 filing showed that her campaign’s total fundraising increased by $560,000 this month to $3.74 million.

That trails Boebert, who showed the Republican had raised $4.48 million on the same day.

Boebert made headlines for an incident that occurred in September 2023 when she was suspended from performing Beetlejuice musical in Denver for vaping and speaking too loudly during a show in which video showed her and the man she was with fondling each other.

The race in Colorado’s 4th District comes as Democrats and Republicans battle for control of the House of Representatives, with the GOP defending a narrow eight-seat majority.

There are 22 toss-ups taking place across the country as of Saturday, according to the Cook Political Report. Ten of those seats are held by Democrats and 14 by Republicans.