The race for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District was never supposed to be this close, not during a midterm election expected to heavily favor Republicans and in such a deep-red district, largely along the state’s Western Slope.

Polls and politicos said far-right incumbent U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert was supposed to have as much as a 9-point advantage. Now, all that’s gone as Colorado and the rest of the country watch a neck-and-neck, back-and-forth race unfold. Boebert’s only leading Democratic challenger Adam Frisch by a fraction of a percentage point.

Frisch, a former Aspen City Councilman, held the country’s attention for much of the week, forcing even the most skeptical observers to wonder if he could beat the incumbent congresswoman, of Silt.

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Ultimately, Boebert jumped ahead in the vote count Thursday and held the advantage into Friday. Her lead sits a few hundred votes outside of Colorado’s automatic-recount threshold and Frisch’s only hope of a comeback rests with the scattered and undetermined number of ballots flowing in from out-of-state. Those votes aren’t expected to be counted and reported until later next week.

No matter who wins in the end, Democrats and Republicans alike are studying the race, trying to figure out how it wound up like this.

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Read more at DenverPost.com.