46.94%: Cory Gardner, GOP
Republican Cory Gardner busted one of Colorado's long-standing political axioms: As Jefferson County goes, so goes Colorado.
Gardner narrowly lost Jefferson County to Democrat Mark Udall but went on to win the U.S. Senate race.
"Conventional wisdom has been turned upside down in this election," said longtime GOP strategist Dick Wadhams, who lives in Jefferson County.
That's because he has long said, and others have agreed with him, that "if you don't win Jeffco, you don't win the state."
Until this election, Jefferson County had picked the winners in every U.S. Senate race since 1990 and gubernatorial contest since 1978, a decades-long stretch that made it the state's premier swing turf.
47.28%: Mark Udall, Democrat
The Jefferson County clerk and recorder on Tuesday posted official results showing that Udall won 47.28 percent of the vote to Gardner's 46.94 percent in Colorado's famously bellwether county.
But Gardner lost by only 869 votes in Jeffco, a tight margin that allowed him to win statewide, 48 percent to 46 percent.
Like the state, Jefferson County is equal parts urban bedroom communities and rugged mountain towns. It's mostly white with a solid Latino population, a mix of gated communities and working-class bungalows.
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Cory Gardner upends conventional wisdom, loses Jeffco but wins Senate