Housing is the top issue worrying Coloradans, across all genders, age groups and political affiliations, according to a new poll of voters in the state.
Other main issues voters said they want the government to address are schools and education, homelessness, immigration and the cost of living. More Coloradans mentioned education as a top issue, compared to a similar poll last year. And for the first time, opposition to President Donald Trump and roads/infrastructure also ranked among voters’ top concerns.
“The cost of living has been a big part of voters' concerns for some time now, and voters are telling us that the amount they pay for nearly everything in their lives is problematic,” said pollster Lori Weigel.
The survey was conducted by a bipartisan team of pollsters for the Colorado Polling Institute. Weigel, a Republican with the polling firm New Bridge Strategy, worked with Kevin Ingham, a Democratic pollster from Aspect Strategic. In late March they surveyed 615 people who said they were likely to vote in next year’s election.
They discovered that how Coloradans feel about their state and their nation diverge sharply on political lines.
The poll found that supporters of the MAGA movement were much prouder to be American, 95 percent, than to be Coloradans, at 66 percent. For Democrats, those numbers were essentially reversed.
Two-in-three Republicans told pollsters that Colorado is on the wrong track, while more than three-quarters of Democrats said it is going in the right direction. Voters who have lived in Colorado for longer are less confident the state is moving in the right direction than those who moved to Colorado more recently.
Of those surveyed, 20 percent were people of color. Politically they matched the state’s overall party membership; about a quarter were Republicans, a quarter Democrats, and the rest were independent. A third defined themselves as supporters of President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
Labor unions and scientists have public trust, the federal government and big business do not
According to the survey, a majority of Coloradans have favorable views of labor unions (55%) and are distrustful of large corporations; only 22 percent have total trust in large corporations. Three-quarters have total trust in small businesses.
Sixty-two percent of those surveyed have total distrust in the federal government.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the amorphous governmental entity fronted by businessman Elon Musk, is distrusted by a majority (54%) and 59 percent have an unfavorable view of Musk himself, most of them very unfavorable.
Nearly 70 percent of those surveyed trust scientists and more than half see public health officials as trustworthy. Fifty-eight percent have total trust in those that count ballots and administer elections. Compared to a 2023 survey, trust in local and state government went up by roughly ten percent. More Coloradans also said they trust professional journalists, 45 percent said they have total trust in Colorado journalists, a 9 percent increase from two years ago.
Many worried about the impact of the president’s policies
The survey was conducted before president Trump’s most dramatic moves on tariffs. But at the time, nearly 60 percent of respondents believed the president’s trade policies will have a negative impact on Colorado residents. A third said they will have a mostly positive impact.
All told, more than half of people surveyed expect the national economy to get worse.
Sixty percent of voters also said the firing of federal employees and cancellation of federal contracts will negatively impact Colorado, although there were big partisan differences. Ninety percent of Democrats said it was a mostly negative impact and 64 percent of independents viewed it negatively, while 69 percent of Republicans said the federal cuts were mostly positive.
A little over half think the administration’s deportation policies have gone too far, while nearly 20 percent say they don’t go far enough.
“Fewer voters now say immigration hurts Colorado more than it helps (compared to prior surveys), but there is also a significant increase in the number of voters who say they are unsure,” the pollsters noted. They also said there was virtually no difference in opinions on the benefits or harm of immigration based on ethnicity.
A majority of Coloradans have very unfavorable views of President Trump, with just two out of five viewing him favorably.
“When we asked the president's favorability, 58 percent said that they viewed him negatively while only 40 percent said that they viewed him favorably. Notably, a majority said that their views of the president are very unfavorable and that includes 60 percent of independents,” said Ingham.
The survey captured Democratic voters’ growing frustrations with their own party
Eight-three percent of Democrats said they want their party to oppose Trump as much as possible. Among that number, three-quarters (78%) believe Democrats, who are in the minority in Congress, are not trying hard enough to block him and agree with the statement that “Democrats have the ability to limit his agenda if they just tried harder.”
Overall, 56 percent of those polled said they view both the Republican and Democratic parties unfavorably. This was a shift downward in favorability for Democrats in the last few months by 11 percent, with a lot of the shift driven by their members’ disappointment. The pollsters described it as a historic drop in the party’s brand since last November.
“Rightly or wrongly, there is a lack of sympathy among Coloradans who want a strong resistance to the administration for the argument that Democrats can't do much because they're out of power,” said Ingham, a Democrat. “The voters who want a strong resistance are the ones who are saying that they have soured on the Democratic party.”
However, the survey results also showed the peril for Democrats in being too focused on obstructing the president. Unaffiliated voters were evenly split between whether Democrats should oppose the president as much as possible, or work with his administration to find common ground.
Seventy-one percent of Colorado voters also said Republicans in Congress should act as a check on Trump. Of that group, 86 percent believe Congress isn’t doing enough, “a sentiment shared by 84% of independents” according to the survey.
The pollsters said people asking for checks and balances in government isn’t unique to this point in time; American voters have long said it’s something they want.
Colorado’s Democratic elected officials viewed favorably
Despite frustrations with their party, Democratic leaders in Colorado had higher favorable ratings than unfavorable.
Of the statewide elected officials, Governor Polis was viewed most favorably at 51 percent, followed by Sen. John Hickenlooper at 49 percent and Sen. Michael Bennet at 45 percent.
Bennet, who is running for governor, has the lowest unfavorables of the three, at 31 percent; Hickenlooper is viewed unfavorably by 36 percent of voters and Polis is seen that way by 40 percent.
Weigel, the Republican pollster, said voters’ broader concern that Democrats as a party aren’t standing up to Trump may not apply to how they view individual elected officials.
“I think Bennet tried to be, for example, a voice expressing some of the angst and concern that they're hearing from Democrats. And certainly he even made disparaging comments about the party overall. So clearly I think there's some of these elected officials that are trying to create some daylight between them and the Democratic brand.”
Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert had the highest unfavorability of the public officials polled, at 59 percent, compared to 25 percent of respondents who view her favorably.
The survey also revealed that for many elected officials, Coloradans largely don’t know enough about them to have an opinion either way.
Sixty percent of people had no opinion of Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is also running for Governor. Forty-seven percent didn’t know how they felt about Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who wants to replace Weiser as AG. And 59 percent had no opinion on Republican Rep. Gabe Evans, the newly elected congressman who represents the state’s most competitive district.
