By admin 
Democrat Jessica Killin is essentially tied with Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank in Colorado’s 5th Congressional District with about two weeks left before Election Day, according to a recent poll conducted on behalf of Killin’s campaign.
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Killin had 46% of the vote to Crank’s 44% in a two-way survey from Oct. 14-18 run by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic firm with a strong track record in Colorado. was shared first with The Colorado Sun on Thursday.
That lead is within the poll’s 4.4 percentage point margin of error, meaning Killin could be up by a greater margin, the race could be dead even or Crank could be slightly ahead. In the head-to-head matchup, 10% of the 500 likely voters polled said they were undecided.
But the fact that the race is even close, let alone the possibility that Killin is leading, is itself a major victory for Democrats, who have never won in the 5th District, which was created in the 1970s and is centered on Colorado Springs. Crank beat his Democratic opponent by 14 percentage points in 2024 and President Donald Trump won El Paso County by about 10 points that year.
In another indication the race is neck and neck, more than $6 million has been spent on the contest by Democrats and Republicans, according to a Colorado Sun analysis and the campaign spending tracker OpenSecrets.
Killin fared even better when poll participants were asked who they would choose among all four candidates on the ballot in the 5th District, including Christopher Mitchell of the American Constitution Party and Libertarian Mark Elworth Jr.
In that four-way race, the poll showed Killin with 43% of the vote, Crank with 38%, Mitchell with 4% and Elworth at 3%.
“Third-party candidates always get more of the vote in polls than they end up with in real life, so we do not expect Mitchell and Elworth to combine for 7%, but their presence on the ballot clearly hurts Crank,” Global Strategy Group pollsters wrote in a memo about the survey.
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The pollsters say their survey showed Killin’s competitiveness is due to Trump’s unpopularity and her support among unaffiliated voters, who make up the largest share of the district’s electorate.
Killin’s campaign released a poll in July showing her down 1 percentage point to Crank with 11% of the electorate undecided. That Global Strategy Group survey had a margin of error of 4.6 percentage points, meaning the race was essentially tied then, too.
But Killin has maintained her competitiveness, and potentially picked up a small lead, despite an onslaught of ads in the 5th District supporting Crank, who is finishing up his first term in Washington.
Much of the Republican spending — about $2.5 million — has come from political action committees, or PACs, tied to Trump as the GOP looks to hang on to its majorities in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.
Conservatives for American Excellence disclosed Wednesday that it had spent more than $1 million on a tranche of last-minute ads attacking Killin.
Killin has gotten super PAC help, too, including from a group tied to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York; American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic organization; and EMILYs List, which works to elect Democratic women.
Killin, the former chief of staff to Doug Emhoff, the husband of then-Vice President Kamala Harris, grew up in Colorado Springs and is running for public office for the first time. Before working for Emhoff, she was the chief of staff for several Democratic members of Congress; worked as a lobbyist for the United Services Automobile Association, known as USAA; and served in the Army.
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Election Day is Nov. 3.