Civic engagement ran high as Larimer County’s voter participation in the 2024 General Election surged to an impressive 84% among active voters. In Larimer County’s 2020 general election, 226,901 votes were cast, and this time around, 230,644 votes were cast out of 273,159 active voters, mostly through mail-in voting at 92.5%, while 7.5% of voters cast ballots in person.

Of the total ballots cast, 61,315 were from Democratic voters, 55,916 from Republican voters, 108,733 from unaffiliated voters and 4,680 from minor party voters.

The Democratic presidential ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz, led the race in Larimer County, garnering 128,638 votes, outpacing Republican contenders President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance, who received 89,179 votes. Third-party candidates, including unaffiliated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Green Party’s Jill Stein, garnered smaller shares of the vote.

In congressional races, incumbent Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat, won District 2 with 85,930 votes, while Marshall Dawson, the Republican competitor, garnered 46,151 votes. The race in District 4 saw a narrow victory, as Democratic candidate Trisha Calvarese edged out Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert with 33,487 votes to Boebert’s 30,962.

Local races also drew attention, with Tina Harris, the Republican candidate, winning the race for Larimer County clerk and recorder, securing 121,831 votes to Democrat Wyatt Schwendeman-Curtis’ 89,073. Additionally, both county commissioner races were highly competitive, with Democrats Kristin Stephens and Jody Shadduck-McNally securing victories in Districts 2 and 3, respectively.

Out of all of Larimer County’s in-person ballots, 2,313 were cast at Colorado State University, where students described mixed motivations surrounding their votes as well as the difficulties first-time voters face in staying informed.

“I know a lot of women in other countries don’t have the right to vote or even to speak and share their mind. So as an American, I’m very proud to be able to vote, and I would never not exercise that right.” -Morgan Adams, first-year engineering student

For many out-of-state students, like Mary Guevara-Guzman, a first-year biology student from Nevada, voting came with various barriers.

“First-time voters don’t really have any guidance on how to vote — (we) only get told to vote,” Guevara-Guzman said. “The registration can take up to days and be problematic, especially for out-of-state students who wanted to vote but aren’t eligible in the state of Colorado.”

Guevara-Guzman also discussed the importance of deciding which state to place her vote in.

“The fact that Nevada is a swing state and my vote would have mattered more there than in Colorado (influenced the way I voted),” Guevara-Guzman said.

Morgan Adams, a first-year engineering student from Maine, said she made her voting decisions carefully, weighing the moral character and policies of each candidate on issues relevant to her home state, such as fisheries and women’s rights.

“I know a lot of women in other countries don’t have the right to vote or even to speak and share their mind,” Adams said. “So as an American, I’m very proud to be able to vote, and I would never not exercise that right.”

Adams said voting while balancing college life created difficulties in voter participation.

“If you’re a busy college student, you don’t have a lot of time to educate yourself and look up all these things,” Adams said. “There’s so much biased media. It’s easier to just run away and not face it than it is to educate yourself and have hard conversations with people.”

Addison Begeman, a first-year mechanical engineering student from Michigan, shared similar sentiments about the challenge of finding credible information.

“This is my first election, so I was honestly excited to vote,” Begeman said. “I try not to believe everything that I see, so before the election, I educated myself on everything and tried to find real information that was legit.”

Lindsay Tate, a first-year mechanical engineering student from New Jersey, found her faith and personal beliefs influencing her vote.

“I looked at each candidate’s policies and what they said they were going to do to help America in their separate ways,” Tate said. “Personal factors like religion definitely affected my decisions.”

Tate described growing up in a family in which the importance of voting was emphasized yet mentioned voting’s potential social impact emerging as a concern.

“The fact that people will stop being friends with you (affects voter participation),” Tate said. “I had an experience where my friends stopped talking to me because of my certain beliefs on a topic.”

Adams said she shared similar views.

“It’s very polarized in our country right now” Adams said. “You can lose important people in your life for voting a certain way.”

Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at CSU, commented on the factors contributing to voter turnout in the local community.

“For individual voters, higher education and higher socioeconomic status increase the likelihood of an individual voting, all other things being equal,” Saunders said, especially in “salient and/or competitive elections,” where voters feel the stakes are high.

This article was written based on unofficial results posted Nov. 8 from the 2024 Larimer County General Election. Final results are expected to be posted by the Larimer County Clerk’s Office Nov. 14.

Reach Chiara Coronado Rosales at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.