This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
The race between Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans and his Democratic challenger, former state Rep. Manny Rutinel, is essentially tied with just a few weeks before voters in Colorado’s toss-up 8th Congressional District start receiving ballots, according to a recent poll.
The poll was conducted by a Republican firm — McLaughlin and Associates — on behalf of Enhancing American Competitiveness, a conservative political nonprofit that doesn’t reveal its donors and is backing Evans.
The poll was conducted on Sept. 16 and 17 among 400 likely 8th District voters over text message and through calls to voters’ cellphones and some landlines.
Forty-eight percent of those polled said they would vote for Evans while 46% said they would vote for Rutinel, with 6% undecided. That means there’s no clear leader in the race when you factor in the poll’s 4.9 percentage point margin of error.
Republicans see the poll as a sign Evans may be able to weather the national discontent among voters toward President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress. But the survey also contains warning signs for Evans and his supporters.
For instance, 48% of those polled said they had an unfavorable view of Evans while 44% said they viewed him favorably. And 51% of those polled said they disapprove of Trump while 34% approve of both Trump and his policies and 13% said they dislike Trump personally but like many of his policies.
Just 34% of respondents said the country was headed in the right direction while 61% said the U.S. was headed on the wrong track.
The poll also had signs of trouble for Rutinel, too.
A little more than 37% of those polled said they had an unfavorable view of Rutinel while 32% said they viewed him favorably. Nearly 18% had never heard of him.
Additionally, the poll showed 47% of voters would back a generic Republican candidate in the district and 47% would back a generic Democratic candidate. That indicates voters’ discontent with Trump and the direction of the country may not translate into a vote for Rutinel.
Millions of dollars have already been spent by super PACs and political nonprofits on the race between Evans and Rutinel, which isn’t unexpected. The closeness of the race — the outcome of which could determine which party controls Congress — isn’t that big of a surprise, either.
Evans unseated Democrat Yadira Caraveo by less than a percentage point in the district in 2024. In 2022, Caraveo won the first election in the newly created district by a similar margin.
The 8th District spans Denver’s northern suburbs along U.S. 85 into Greeley. It was drawn during Colorado’s 2021 redistricting process to be hypercompetitive.
