Colorado surprised no one when it favored Vice President Kamala Harris over then-candidate Donald Trump by 11 points. This deep-blue state years ago put liberal Democrats in charge of all state offices, both Senate seats, five of eight congressional districts, both chambers of the state legislature, the Colorado Board of Regents, and the State Board of Education.

Since 2018, Colorado has gone from purple to bluer than blue. Yet despite strong support for Harris, Centennial State voters this year gave moderates and conservatives enough to celebrate.

Consider Pueblo — Colorado’s 10th largest city with a metro population of 170,000. Pueblo has historically been a Democratic stronghold, a blue-collar Boulder, as a working-class steel town that is 50% Hispanic and heavily unionized.

“An analysis of what is clearly a realignment of party coalitions shows a massive opportunity for growth for Republicans — if they immediately get to work to seize it. Where to start? Pueblo,” Colorado political strategist Sean Duffy wrote.

Republicans or Republican-aligned candidates took control of the Pueblo County Commission, the Pueblo City Council, and the community’s school boards. Pueblo County voters chose Trump after favoring President Joe Biden in 2020. A Nov. 6 Pueblo Chieftain headline said, “Republicans triumph, incumbents falter.”

Pueblo politicos on the left and right say conservatives have never seen so much success in the city’s history.

Pueblo’s drift to the right tracks with other largely Hispanic regions of the country that voted Republican in record-breaking numbers. It also attests to concerns among leading Democrats that their party is hemorrhaging minorities and the working class.

Consider that Boulder, Colorado’s other long-term Democratic stronghold, is mostly non-Hispanic White, wealthy, and professional. While the average home listing in Pueblo is $305,900, Boulder’s average listings exceed $1 million. Boulder County went for Harris by 77% and strongly favored every center-left issue and candidate.

Research by the American Enterprise Institute finds that only 14% of Pueblo’s union households voted Republican in 1960. This year, they went 46% for Harris and 46% for Trump.

“Latinos are moving to the right because the family is what matters most to them,” said Maria Del Carmen Guzman-Weese, a Latin American immigrant and naturalized citizen living in Colorado’s heavily Hispanic 8th Congressional District.

“In Hispanic culture, the abuela (grandmother) often lives at home with her children and grandchildren. The family does what she says, and she typically advocates traditional values. Democrats want to teach things in school that she believes are best taught at home.”

Weese said Republican support for small businesses has also nudged Hispanics to the right.

“We are very much about small business. Conservative Republicans have become the defenders of family, the working class and small businesses — they stand for family, God, and country, which are important to Latinos.”

The border, said Weese, is another reason Hispanics are moving right.

“Illegal immigrants congregate in communities with large Hispanic populations, because they want to be around people who know their customs and languages,” Weese said. “But that includes criminals who cross the border and torment Hispanic communities.”

Weese said Hispanic support for the right will continue to grow in Colorado if Republicans focus on nurturing the relationship and standing up for business and families. Peruvian immigrant Hugo Chavez-Rey, a retired retired Colorado telecom executive, believes Hispanics could flip Colorado. ”Colorado can be red again,” said Chavez-Rey. “But only if Republicans follow the Trump model and bring more Hispanics into the party and give them a seat at the table.”

Though Trump lost statewide by 11 points this year, it is 2.5 points better than he fared against Joe Biden in 2020 — a gain largely attributable by increasing support from Black and Hispanic voters.

The election indicates that Coloradans in general have lost patience with the Democratic establishment’s decadelong crusade for soft-on-crime “criminal justice reform,” which correlates with a 61% increase in violent crime, a 94% increase in homicides, a 13% increase in rape, a 22% increase in robbery, an 88% increase in aggravated assault, and a 231% increase in auto theft.

Just this year, U.S. News & World Report ranked Colorado as the third-most dangerous state. Voters rejected the light sentences advocated by Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, and the legislature by enacting Proposition 128 with 62% of the vote. The new law increases the time convicts must serve for violent crimes before eligibility for parole.

Voters also addressed Colorado’s runaway crime by passing Proposition 130, which creates a fund for law enforcement training and a $1 million death benefit for families of first responders killed on duty.

Another ballot measure promoted by conservatives, Amendment 80, would have enshrined school choice in the Colorado Constitution. Opponents, who organized a well-funded opposition campaign, included the National Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Colorado PTA, the Colorado Association of School Executives, Denver Public Schools, and a who’s who list of other left-leaning organizations.

Opponents promoted a deceptive conspiracy theory that said the amendment would impoverish public schools and pave the way for vouchers. Despite millions spent to defeat the measure with a false narrative, it received support from 48.1% of the electorate. Encouraged by that, supporters plan to try again in two years with a stronger campaign that might garner the 55% support needed to amend the constitution.

Colorado conservatives also claim success for two measures that did not make the ballot. Center-right organizations gathered enough signatures to place initiatives written to rein in soaring property taxes resulting from rising property values. Polis was so concerned the initiatives would pass that he convened a special legislative session last summer. The session delivered tax cuts substantial enough that sponsors of the initiatives agreed to keep them off the ballot.

Michael Fields, president of the center-right public policy institute Advance Colorado, said the tax deal is “probably our biggest success of the year” for him and other center-right Republicans.

“We didn’t go into it saying, ‘Hey, we’re gonna force them to call a special session.’ We were going to move forward with these measures, and they were worried they were gonna pass, so it ended up being a deal that was made out of it,” Fields said, as quoted by Colorado Politics.

“But we have no problem, obviously, going to voters and asking directly if the legislature’s not going to step up and do it. I definitely think that there’s a bunch of stuff that the legislature won’t do that’s good for Colorado that people will support and that we can step in and fill that void.”

Trump’s statewide drubbing in the past three presidential elections came mostly from Denver, Boulder and a few other densely populated cities, suburbs, and mountain resorts. Geographically, Trump won most Colorado counties and precincts. The right’s geographic advantage helped Republicans gain enough seats in the state House to overcome years of the Democratic Party’s veto-proof supermajority.

In another geographic win for the right, voters flipped Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, which is nearly 40% Hispanic and includes part of deep-blue Denver, by electing Republican Gabe Evans to replace Rep. Yadira Caraveo. The flip gives Colorado a fourth Republican in Congress.

Other electoral displeasure with Colorado’s left-wing establishment showed up with voters defeating animal rights measures, including a proposed ban on hunting lions and other wild cats. Denver rejected a measure to outlaw meatpacking plants, which would have killed hundreds of minority jobs.

The defeat of animal rights measures reflects a shift in momentum among Colorado’s electorate, after voters in 2020 approved a wolf reintroduction measure. Back then, farmers, ranchers and their advocates warned that Colorado’s fast-growing Western Slope was no longer suitable for wolves. As they warned, the wolves has wreaked havoc by killing wildlife and pets and now face threat of being poached by rural Coloradans who have lost patients with the damage and other threats posed by the wolves.

Though Colorado remains solidly blue, November’s election shows cracks and faults in the left’s foundation. It gives Republicans hope in their fight to make Colorado purple again.

An earlier version of this article appeared in Gazette sister publication the Washington Examiner.