Colorado votes by mail. County clerks mail a ballot to every active registered voter, and nearly everyone sends it back by mail or drop box. Voters can also vote in person at a voter service and polling center. This site tracks ballots returned, mail and in person together, from the Secretary of State's daily release. Unaffiliated voters are the largest group, bigger than Democrats and Republicans combined. Ballots went out earlier this year: a new law let clerks mail them from October 2 (32 days before Election Day), against October 11 in 2024 and October 17 in 2022. Use "Line up cycles by" to compare at the same number of days since mailing began instead of days before the election.
Source: the Colorado Secretary of State's "Ballots Returned" release, posted each weekday afternoon with an XLSX of ballots returned by county and party and, statewide, by gender, age and party, through 11:59 PM the night before. Past cycles use every daily release from the 2022 and 2024 generals. Active voters come from the SOS voter registration statistics for October 1 of each year.
Where 2026 stands
By party
Cumulative ballots returned
Show data tables for these charts
Every county against 2022 and 2024
Return rate by party
Each party's cumulative share of ballots returned: 2026 so far vs 2022, same day
Share of all ballots returned through each day with an SOS release (cumulative, not that day alone), against the same number of days before Election Day in the comparison year (party at the time). "± pts" is 2026 minus that year: read down a column to see how each party's share is shifting day to day. The margin is Democratic minus Republican, in points of all ballots returned so far; "Shift" is 2026's margin minus the comparison year's.
Age and gender
By age band
By gender
Mail and drop box vs in person
"In person" means ballots cast at a voter service and polling center. Everything else came back by mail or drop box. Most centers open about two weeks before Election Day, and in-person voting peaks on Election Day itself.
Who's turning out, per 100,000 active voters
Ballots returned ÷ active voters in the same party on October 1 of that year, per 100,000 of them, so groups of very different size can be compared. Unaffiliated voters usually return their ballots later than party members.
The bar runs from 0.5× (left) to 2× (right) on a log scale, with the tick at 1×.
Map: where ballots are coming back
All 64 counties on one scale. Click or tap a county to make it the geography for every section.