What the numbers say
Ballots returned, cumulative (mail + in person)
2022 and 2024: Colorado Secretary of State daily Election Activity workbooks (official), which start about two weeks before Election Day. 2026: civicAPI daily totals (secondary †) until the state's 2026 workbooks are posted. 2024 was presidential.
Party share of ballots returned
Democrats minus Republicans, as a share of all ballots returned (days with at least 20,000 ballots). "Unaffiliated" is Colorado's largest group; civicAPI folds it into "Other".
Who has returned ballots: latest official report by party
Share of ballots returned by party: 2026 latest (†) vs the 2022 and 2024 reports at about the same point, or the earliest report.
Age of voters who returned ballots (official, mail + in person)
Share of ballots by age group in the state's workbook, at the first report of each cycle (14–15 days out) and the last pre-election report. 2026 age data isn't available yet; 2026 gender (UF Election Lab †) is in the KPI above.
Sources & caveats
- 2022 and 2024: Colorado Secretary of State daily ballot-return workbooks (party, method, gender, age), e.g. 20241031ElectionActivity.xlsx, 20221101ElectionActivity.xlsx; file date = data as-of date (checked against the SOS release of Oct 23, 2024: 636,597)
- 2026: civicAPI CO ballots returned (secondary, by party); gender from the UF Election Lab via ElectIndex (secondary)
- Mailing dates: SOS, Oct 2, 2026; SOS, Oct 17, 2022
- All rows: co-data.csv
- No same-day comparison yet. The state's daily reports began 15 days out in 2022 (Oct 24) and 14 days out in 2024 (Oct 22). 2026 reaches those days on Oct 19–20.
- Ballots went out a week earlier in 2026 (law change below), so early 2026 totals are not comparable to the same day in past years.
- Secondary-source check: KGNU reported "about 140,000" ballots returned, citing the Secretary of State, in an article that doesn't give an as-of date. civicAPI shows 290,678 through Oct 15. We use civicAPI's daily series and will switch to the official workbooks when they are posted.
- No 2018 series: the state's 2018 daily files are no longer online under any file name we could find, and the Internet Archive didn't respond.
- Colorado does not record race on voter registration, so there is no race chart.
Law changes that affect comparisons
Rule changes between cycles can shift how (not just how many) people vote early. Keep these in mind when comparing to past years.
- 2026 · HB26-1113: mail ballots now go out 25 days before the election instead of 18–22, and drop boxes accept ballots for 22 days instead of 15. In 2026 clerks could mail from Oct 2 and had to by Oct 9 (2022: mailed Oct 17–21). This moves 2026 returns earlier. HB26-1113
- All-mail since 2013: every active voter is mailed a ballot, with in-person vote centers too (unchanged 2018–2026). C.R.S. 1-7.5-107