In March, the CPI surveyed 632 voters across the state who are likely to participate in the November 2024 election, and found that since November 2023 — the last time the group conducted a statewide survey — voters have lost confidence that Colorado is moving in the right direction. Back then, participants believed in Colorado by seven-point margin. Now, it’s a fifty-fifty split.
“A large part of what's driving the change here is a shift among Republicans,” Kevin Ingham, Democrat pollster with Aspect Strategic, said at an April 2 media briefing describing the findings. “Last year, a little over two-thirds of Republicans said that Colorado was heading in the wrong direction. In this survey, that number has spiked up to 83 percent.”
Democrats and unaffiliated voters showed no change in their feelings about Colorado's direction, he added.
Aspect Strategic conducted the poll in tandem with New Bridge Strategy, a Republican polling outfit led by Lori Weigel.
Behind that lack of faith in the state's direction is a concern with cost of living, the pollsters found. In fact, a slight majority of those surveyed said they have considered moving or have moved due to cost concerns.
Nearly four in ten respondents said they’ve thought about moving to a different state, while 13 percent said they considered moving to a different part of the state. Of those surveyed, 10 percent had actually made the leap of moving to parts of the state with a lower cost of living than the area they'd lived in previously.
“The voters who are most likely to tell us that they're considering moving includes younger voters, voters of color, low income voters and renters,” Ingham added. “So, lots of the people that you might expect to feel the highest cost burden are also the ones who are telling us that they are most likely to consider moving either out of state or to another place in Colorado.”
Republicans are more likely to have considered a move: 60 percent compared to 42 percent of Democrats. Those Republican voters are also feeling distanced from their communities, the poll shows, with 60 percent saying they feel more isolated than they did five years ago. However, 29 percent of Democrat voters agreed, so it isn’t an issue only impacting conservatives.
“We could be picking up on a lingering COVID hangover, but given the partisan dynamics of these data, there could also be a political dimension to these feelings where conservatives, in particular, feel like they have less in common with other Coloradans,” Ingham said.
The CPI's latest results back that up, with Colorado having clearly lost its purple status, according to the poll.
Weigel, who used to conduct polling for the Rocky Mountain News, provided data from 2008 to contrast with the latest CPI poll. Back then, 60 percent of people said Colorado was somewhere between red and blue politically. Now, 63 percent say it is blue, while just 33 percent say it’s purple.
“Boy, how times have changed,” Weigel said. “I guess the upside of that is we get less presidential candidate television ads.”
Another sign of shifting times: 58 percent of people reported that Colorado has changed so much that they sometimes feel like a stranger in the state. That’s the case for 85 percent of Republicans, 50 percent of unaffiliated voters and 35 percent of Democrats. Those who have lived in Colorado longer are more likely to report feeling distanced than newer arrivals do, according to the poll.
People are most worried about immigration, homelessness and housing affordability, sharing those as the most important issues they think the state government should address.
“You're going to note that a number of pocketboo- related topics are mentioned,” Ingham said. “That includes things like housing affordability, taxes, cost of living, the economy and jobs and inflation. In total, nearly a third of voters mentioned one of these pocketbook topics, which is more than twice as many as mentioned immigration.”
Still, the poll found immigration is increasing as a topic that concerns Coloradans, Ingham admitted.
Colorado Pride
Despite their concerns, 84 percent of poll participants still considered themselves proud to be Coloradans — but their opinions on politicians weren't as heartwarming.Of the state’s prominent politicians, Jared Polis is the only one to earn a majority-favorable rating, with 50 percent of voters approving of the governor and 44 percent viewing him unfavorably, compared to a 45 percent approval rating for Senator John Hickenlooper and 38 percent for Senator Michael Bennet.
Though she isn’t elected to a statewide office, the poll still asked about Representative Lauren Boebert, given her prominence in the news, according to Weigel. The results: 62 percent gave her an unfavorable rating and just 22 percent a favorable one. Just 42 percent of Republicans rated the Republican congresswoman favorably, and 5 percent of Democrats said the same. (Boebert was in the news again on Wednesday, April 3, after reports that she suffered a minor health scare requiring emergency blood clot surgery; she is expected to recover.)
Leading into the presidential election, the poll shows Colorado voters picking Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a 10-point margin — but that's not because there are a ton of Biden lovers in the state.
“No matter who voters say they're planning to vote for, it's really mostly a reaction to Trump,” Weigel said.
In fact, 63 percent of those who favored Biden said their vote was against Trump rather than for Biden, while 55 percent of Trump voters said their vote was for him rather than against Biden.
But what everyone in Colorado can agree on is that they love ballot measures, with 88 percent of the respondents saying they like voting on a variety of issues.
In fact, even controversial measures like the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR), marijuana legalization, sports gambling and selling wine at grocery stores were met with majority approval from voters. What didn’t? Wolf reintroduction to Colorado. According to the poll, only 34 percent of voters believe wolf reintroduction is a good thing for the state, with 27 percent believing it to be harmful. The rest say it’s too early to tell, since wolves just hit Colorado’s soil in December.
“There wasn't as huge a geographic dynamic as one might assume,” said Weigel, referring to the wolf reintroduction split between the Front Range, where the ballot measure was successful among voters, and Western Slope residents, who largely rejected the measure. “While there was a geographic distinction, it wasn't that it was completely overwhelming," she added.
Of people in metro Denver, 39 percent said wolf reintroduction is a good thing, with 29 percent of the rest of the state in agreement.
According to founder David Carlson, the CPI is planning another survey of Denver voters soon, and will continue polling throughout the year.
