The precincts covering Monument, Palmer Lake and the immediately surrounding area voted Republican for president by 44 points in 2016 and by 26 points in 2024. On identical ground, turnout barely moved. What changed is the composition of the vote: Democratic ballots rose by about 2,200 while Republican ballots fell by about 550, and every one of the thirteen precincts with a full record moved the same direction.
Precinct-level returns published by the Colorado Secretary of State allow the presidential vote in northern El Paso County to be tracked block by block across three elections. Seventeen precincts cover Monument, Palmer Lake and the land immediately around them; thirteen of those have results in all three. Measured as a share of the two-party vote, their combined Republican margin ran R+44.1 in 2016, R+30.1 in 2020 and R+26.4 in 2024.
That is a narrowing of 17.6 points. Part of it is an artifact of the year it starts in. Third-party candidates took 8.7 percent of the vote in these precincts in 2016, against 2.8 percent in 2020 and 2.6 percent in 2024, and a two-party margin ignores those ballots. Measured against every vote cast rather than only the two major parties, the narrowing is 14.5 points. Both figures describe the same movement; the smaller one is the more conservative reading.
Republican lead as a share of the two-party presidential vote, by precinct. Hatching marks precinct 305, created in August 2025, which has no published precinct results. Source: Colorado Secretary of State precinct returns; precinct boundaries from El Paso County GIS.
Most of the Movement Came in One Cycle
The change was not steady. Of the 17.6 points, 13.9 arrived between 2016 and 2020. The following cycle added 3.7 more. A reader who saw only the endpoints would infer a gradual drift; the record shows one sharp cycle followed by a much smaller one.
Turnout Held Steady While the Mix Changed
Across those same thirteen precincts, 20,046 ballots were cast in 2016 and 20,532 in 2024 — an increase of 2.4 percent over eight years. Within that near-flat total, Democratic votes rose from 5,120 to 7,358 and Republican votes fell from 13,187 to 12,641.
Growth in the Tri-Lakes appears in the record in a different form. El Paso County has added precincts here as population has risen: three of the precincts on today’s map first returned results in 2020, a fourth in 2024, and a fifth — number 305, covering downtown Monument — was created on August 4, 2025 and has not yet produced published precinct figures. Counting every precinct that reported in each year rather than a fixed set, ballots in the area rose from 20,046 in 2016 to 26,393 in 2024. That larger number reflects more precincts, not a comparable increase in turnout on the same ground.
Every Precinct Moved, by Different Amounts
All thirteen precincts with a full record narrowed toward Democrats, by margins ranging from 25.2 points to 10.4. The largest movements are in and around Monument itself. The smallest are on the eastern edge of the area.
The area remains Republican in every precinct. In 2024 the seventeen reporting precincts ranged from R+13.6 to R+41.2. None voted Democratic in any of the three elections.
| Precinct | Touches | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 315 | Monument | R+48.9 | R+26.1 | R+23.7 | −25.2 |
| 303 | Monument | R+47.0 | R+31.9 | R+21.9 | −25.1 |
| 317 | Unincorporated | R+45.4 | R+30.0 | R+23.4 | −22.0 |
| 210 | Monument | R+47.0 | R+33.5 | R+27.2 | −19.8 |
| 301 | Palmer Lake | R+35.4 | R+19.2 | R+17.5 | −17.9 |
| 312 | Unincorporated | R+40.8 | R+27.2 | R+22.9 | −17.9 |
| 311 | Unincorporated | R+43.0 | R+32.4 | R+28.4 | −14.6 |
| 310 | Monument · Palmer Lake | R+43.9 | R+33.0 | R+29.4 | −14.5 |
| 314 | Monument | R+47.6 | R+33.0 | R+33.2 | −14.4 |
| 302 | Monument · Palmer Lake | R+27.2 | R+15.6 | R+13.6 | −13.6 |
| 316 | Monument | R+52.2 | R+40.7 | R+39.1 | −13.1 |
| 313 | Monument | R+40.0 | R+32.3 | R+29.2 | −10.8 |
| 212 | Unincorporated | R+47.9 | R+35.8 | R+37.5 | −10.4 |
| 318 | Monument | — | R+32.4 | R+30.6 | −1.8 from 2020 |
| 319 | Monument | — | R+23.3 | R+21.2 | −2.1 from 2020 |
| 304 | Monument · Palmer Lake | — | R+30.9 | R+26.6 | −4.3 from 2020 |
| 323 | Unincorporated | — | — | R+41.2 | new precinct |
What Precinct Returns Measure
Precinct returns record how a place voted, not why, and not who. A precinct whose margin narrows may contain residents who voted differently than before, residents who arrived or left, or both in unknown proportion. Nothing in this data distinguishes among those, and inferring individual behavior from precinct totals is a well-known error.
The figures also cover presidential voting only. Municipal offices in Monument and Palmer Lake are nonpartisan, school board seats are nonpartisan, and none of them appear in this analysis. How the area votes for president is not a reliable guide to how it votes for a town trustee.
The Ballot Ahead
Voters in the area go to the polls again on November 3. In Monument, six candidates filed for five town offices and the ballot carries a question on the town’s construction tax. In Palmer Lake, two candidates are running for mayor and ten for five trustee seats. Both towns coordinate their elections with El Paso County, so both will appear in the county’s returns — and, for the first time, so will precinct 305 in downtown Monument.
Residents also vote in two different county commissioner districts. The incorporated towns of Monument and Palmer Lake sit in District 3; Woodmoor, Gleneagle and Black Forest sit in District 1.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Six Candidates, Five Seats, One Contested Race · Palmer Lake’s November Ballot Is Set · Monument’s Draft 2040 Plan Is Out
Election returns: Colorado Secretary of State historical elections database · El Paso County Clerk and Recorder, Elections
Districts: El Paso County Commissioner District 1 · District 3
Methodology
Figures are drawn from precinct-level returns for the 2016, 2020 and 2024 general elections published by the Colorado Secretary of State, covering the seventeen El Paso County precincts that take in Monument, Palmer Lake and the immediately surrounding area. These are county voting precincts, not a school-district or municipal boundary. Precinct geography comes from El Paso County’s public GIS service. Only presidential contests are used; the 2022 governor’s race was excluded because comparing a race for a different office, in a different type of election year, would mix effects that cannot be separated.
Margin is expressed as the Republican lead as a share of the two-party vote. Because third-party voting was unusually high in 2016 — 8.7 percent of ballots cast in these precincts, against 2.8 percent in 2020 and 2.6 percent in 2024 — the same movement measured against all votes cast is 14.5 points rather than 17.6. Trend figures use the thirteen precincts with results in all three elections, so that changes in the number of precincts do not appear as changes in turnout.
Colorado precinct numbers are ten digits, the first five of which encode congressional and legislative districts and were rewritten in the 2021–22 redistricting. Precincts are therefore matched across years on the final five digits. That a precinct keeps its number does not prove its boundary was unchanged, and no precinct in the area lies entirely inside Monument or Palmer Lake; town labels indicate which precincts touch each town. El Paso County’s own election-night system does not publish precinct-level vote totals, so the state’s returns are the source throughout.
