How the Colorado scores work

The vote records

• Every vote comes from the General Assembly's own floor vote records on leg.colorado.gov: each bill's or resolution's page lists its recorded floor votes, and each links to a record with every member's vote by name. We use every recorded House and Senate floor vote of the 75th General Assembly, in its 2025 and 2026 regular sessions and the extraordinary session the Governor called in August 2025: 3,753 votes (2,056 in the House, 1,697 in the Senate), Jan. 8, 2025 to May 13, 2026. The General Assembly doesn't meet again until the 76th convenes in January 2027.
• A vote is used only if its members' votes add up to the counts on its record and to the counts its bill's page shows, and it lists every member serving that day exactly once. A vacant seat is listed as vacant, by district, and the seat must be vacant in our records that day too. All but 2 did. Two records list two members twice each with different votes, and their own counts fit either reading, so they can't say how those members voted: the House's vote of May 5, 2025 on SB25-310 (Representatives Weinberg and Woodrow) and the Senate's of May 1, 2026 on SB26-051 (Senators Amabile and Kipp). Those two votes are left out. In the House's vote of February 12, 2026 on HB26-1151, Representative Camacho is listed twice, yes and absent, and only yes fits the record's counts, so that's how it's read. Three Senate records leave out one senator, with counts that add up without them: SB25-140 on February 26, 2025 (Senator Rod Pelton) and HB26-1274 on May 11 and 12, 2026 (Senators Nick Hinrichsen and Cathy Kipp). Those votes are kept, and aren't counted for or against the senator left out.
• Recorded votes include third reading (final passage in each chamber), amendments offered on third reading, amendments to the Committee of the Whole's report, the other chamber's amendments (concur, then repass) and conference committee reports. Most second-reading business is done in the Committee of the Whole, where votes aren't recorded by name, so those aren't here, and neither are committee votes or voice votes.
• Votes that aren't on a bill, resolution or memorial, such as the Senate's votes to confirm the Governor's appointees, aren't on any bill's page. The House and Senate Journals record them, but leg.colorado.gov asks automated readers not to download the Journals, so they aren't included.
• Colorado's constitution passes a bill only with a majority of all members elected, 33 in the House and 18 in the Senate, not a majority of those voting. The records don't print whether a vote passed, so the vote pages show the yeas and nays only.
• Contested votes are votes where the losing side got at least 10% of the yeas and nays: 1,371 in the House and 642 in the Senate. Every vote has its own page. Floor votes lists the contested and party-line ones, and every vote on request.

Who cast each vote

• Each record names members by surname, with an initial where two members of the General Assembly share one (“Stewart K.”, “Stewart R.”). Each name is tied to the one member of that chamber with that surname, and initial, who held a seat on the day of the vote. A name that fits no one serving, or more than one, stops the build until the cause is found.
• Names and terms come from Open States. Where its dates differ from the General Assembly's records, we follow those: the day each current member was sworn in, from the Legislative Council staff's term-limit sheets for the House and Senate; resignations from the General Assembly's member list or reports at the time; and the death of Senator Faith Winter on November 26, 2025. Open States doesn't have Representative William Lindstedt's House seat, which he held until he took Senator Winter's seat on January 5, 2026, or Representative Maria Gonzalez, whom the Governor appointed to House District 32 on October 9, 2026, after the last vote here.
• Each build checks our current members against the General Assembly's own list of members, names and parties.
• Photos are the official portraits from each member's page on leg.colorado.gov. A member without one shows initials.

Votes with the Speaker or Senate President

• Colorado's presiding officers vote like any member: the Speaker of the House, Julie McCluskie (District 13), and the President of the Senate, James Coleman (District 33), each elected by their chamber when the General Assembly convened on January 8, 2025. Each held the office for every vote here.
• The score is the share of votes on which the member voted the same way, yea or nay, as their chamber's leader. A vote counts only when both of them voted yea or nay. The Speaker voted on 2,003 of 2,056 House votes (nay on 271); the Senate President on 1,695 of 1,697 Senate votes (nay on 71).
• Democrats hold both chambers, so both leaders are Democrats.
• The headline number uses contested votes. On unanimous votes nearly everyone agrees with the leader, so the share on all votes, shown alongside, is high for almost everyone.
• A score needs at least 20 votes. The leaders aren't scored against themselves.
• This works like “votes with the President” on the Congress pages, with one difference: the President's position on a bill comes from the White House's public statements, while the leader's position here is the leader's own recorded vote.

Votes with own party

• Counts party-line votes: votes where most Democrats voted one way and most Republicans the other (1,135 in the House, 501 in the Senate). The score is the share of those votes where the member voted with most of their own party. The Congress pages use the same definition.
• Partisan rank orders each chamber's current members by this score, whichever their party: 1 votes with their party most often, and the last votes with it least. Members shown with the same whole percent share a rank, and each legislator's page says how many share it and how many vote with their party more often.
• A score needs at least 20 party-line votes.
• The table of contested votes on each legislator's page marks every contested vote where they voted against most of their party, whether or not it was a party-line vote, so it can list more votes than the score counts.

Didn't vote at roll call

• The share of recorded votes, while the member was in office, on which the record shows no vote for them.
• The records mark a member who didn't vote either “Excused”, absent with the chamber's leave, or “Absent”. Neither chamber records an abstention.
• Because a bill needs a majority of all members on third reading, not voting on it has the same effect on the outcome as voting nay.
• “In office” means the record lists the member: each one lists every seated member, whether or not they voted.

The seat chart

• Each chamber's current members are seats, ordered from most liberal (left) to most conservative (right). There's no DW-NOMINATE score for state legislators, so the order comes from the General Assembly's own contested votes: for every pair of members, the share of contested votes on which they voted the same way, scaled to one left-right dimension (Poole's agreement-score method, the usual first step of roll-call scaling). Republicans are on the right. A member with fewer than 20 contested votes sits at their party's middle.
• Color uses the same rule as the Congress pages: how often a member crosses party lines toward the middle on party-line votes, siding with the other party alongside their own party's more moderate members. Solid blue or red means almost never; purple means at least 1 in 5 of those votes.
• Colorado legislators break from their party on party-line votes more often than members of Congress (one in ten breaks on at least 12.3% of them, against 7.4% in Congress), about as often as Georgia's and Pennsylvania's, so the Colorado pages use the same color steps as those states and Florida, twice Congress's: purple at 20% rather than 10%, then 15, 10, 6 and 3%. That keeps purple for the truly moderate.
• Gray seats: no party-line score.

Bills passed

• Every House and Senate bill of the three sessions, from each bill's page on leg.colorado.gov: 789 House bills and 524 Senate bills, the budget (the Long Bill) included. Concurrent resolutions (proposed amendments to the constitution, which go to the voters, not the Governor), joint resolutions, resolutions and memorials aren't counted.
• A Colorado bill has prime sponsors in each chamber: one or two who carry it in the chamber where it starts, and one or two who carry it in the other. Each prime sponsor is credited in their own chamber, linked from the bill's page to their member page, so a bill counts once for each. Additional sponsors and co-sponsors aren't counted.
• Passed both chambers: the bill was sent to the Governor, or to the voters (546 House bills, 401 Senate bills). It became law when the Governor signed it or it became law without his signature; it didn't if he vetoed it and the veto stood. Governor Polis vetoed 23 of them. One more passed both chambers but goes to the voters instead of the Governor: SB26-135, which puts a school-funding question on the November 3 ballot, counted as passed and shown as referred to the voters. Each build ties every law to its chapter in the session laws, and checks the General Assembly's list of each session's laws against the bills, chapter for chapter.
• Colorado's constitution bars local or special laws where a general law can apply, so every bill counts the same way. The ranked number is bills that passed both chambers.
• Ranks are among current members of the chamber, and among current members of the chamber in the same party: 1 has the most, and members with the same number share a rank. Members who took office during the term had less time to pass bills, and the members of the Joint Budget Committee are the prime sponsors of the budget bills.

Budget projects

• Colorado's Long Bill, the state budget, doesn't name the legislator who asked for an item, so there's no budget figure for Colorado legislators.

The November 3 ballot

• All 65 House seats and 21 of the 35 Senate seats are on the November 3 ballot; in four of those Senate districts the winner serves the last two years of a term. Senators serve four-year terms: the Senate districts on the ballot, and the four (Districts 17, 21, 29 and 31) whose appointed senators fill a vacancy only until this election, come from the Senate's term-limit sheet (Section 1-12-203 (1), C.R.S.).
• Candidates are those the Colorado Secretary of State certified to the counties on September 4, 2026, as its official candidate list shows them, without the candidates it marks as withdrawn. Certified write-in candidates aren't printed on the ballot; the race says when there is one. The list doesn't mark incumbents: a candidate is marked the incumbent when the name is the seat holder's.

Bill explanations

Colorado vote pages don't carry an explanation of the bill yet. Each page's title is the bill's short title as the General Assembly prints it, and the page links to the bill on leg.colorado.gov, where its summary, full text and fiscal notes are.

Data sources and downloads

Everything these pages show can be downloaded, free to reuse. Percent columns ending in “_shown” are the whole numbers the pages show; the counts behind each one are beside it. Terms of reuse

• members.csv: Every Colorado legislator this term with each score, the counts behind it and the whole percent the pages show.
• votes.csv: Every Colorado floor roll call with its totals, whether it was contested or party-line, how the leader and each party's majority voted, and the official record.
• member-votes.csv: How every Colorado legislator voted on every floor roll call.
• bills.csv: Every Colorado bill this term with its sponsors, its kind (statewide, local or claim) and how far it got.

Checks

• PASS: Colorado House: current members match the chamber's own list — 65 members and 0 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Colorado Senate: current members match the chamber's own list — 35 members and 0 vacant seats agree
• PASS: Colorado: every bill's sponsors are legislators on these pages, and their counts add up — 4,334 sponsor credits on 2,507 bills
• PASS: Colorado: every bill's prime sponsors tied to one legislator, every bill sent to the Governor accounted for, every law on its session-law chapter — 923 laws tie to the session laws
• PASS: Colorado: the vote-by-vote download's files match the state's settings — member-votes.csv
• PASS: Colorado: the address lookup's file lists every seat's holder — 100 seats
• WARN: Colorado: every vote on the records credited to the right legislator — 2 vote(s) not credited (each with its reason): SB25-310 House vote 21664 (2025-05-05): lists Ron Weinberg and Steven Woodrow twice (Ron Weinberg: Yes, No; Steven Woodrow: No, Yes), and its own counts fit 2 readings; SB26-051 Senate vote 29507 (2026-05-01): lists Judy Amabile and Cathy Kipp twice (Judy Amabile: Yes, No; Cathy Kipp: Yes, No), and its own counts fit 2 readings
• PASS: Colorado: bill explanations are approved and match their official source — 0 vote pages show one
• PASS: Colorado: every vote page's bill has its title — 3753 votes
• PASS: Colorado: every current legislator has an official portrait — 109 portraits
• PASS: Colorado: the district map has every seat, and only those — 65 House districts, 35 Senate districts
• PASS: Colorado: every incumbent on the ballot links to their voting record — all linked
• PASS: Colorado: every floor vote's record adds up to its counts and to its measure's page, and names every member serving that day once — all 3,753 of them; set aside, as their own records contradict themselves: SB25-310 House vote 21664 (2025-05-05): lists Ron Weinberg and Steven Woodrow twice (Ron Weinberg: Yes, No; Steven Woodrow: No, Yes), and its own counts fit 2 readings; SB26-051 Senate vote 29507 (2026-05-01): lists Judy Amabile and Cathy Kipp twice (Judy Amabile: Yes, No; Cathy Kipp: Yes, No), and its own counts fit 2 readings
• PASS: Colorado: Nov. 3 legislative candidates cover every seat on the ballot — 86 races