By Tina Griego Colorado News Collaborative, and Megan Verlee, CPR News
Thousands of Coloradans responding to a survey by their local newsrooms say candidates competing for their votes this year need to be focused primarily on several broad issues: democracy and good government, the economy and cost of living, the environment, climate and natural resources, immigration and abortion.
Which concerns weigh most heavily on respondents’ minds changes with their politics. Conservatives in the survey prioritized immigration and the economy, followed by the state of the government. Moderates and liberals, in contrast, chose democracy and good government as their top issue by a wide margin.
“If we don’t have free and informed citizens with equal access to the ballot box, then we won’t have democracy and the country won’t be worth preserving,” Marcus Pohlmann, a Highlands Ranch resident and a professor emeritus of political science, wrote in a comment that was echoed by many others.
The survey is a part of an ongoing effort among more than 60 Colorado newsrooms, including Bucket List Community News to ask, listen and respond to what voters in their communities say matters to them most. As part of the Voter Voices project, we are asking our communities, among other things, to rank their top three issues among 13 categories.
An issue’s ranking reveals its importance to voters, but not the nuances of their views. Those nuances are emerging in the answer to the survey’s core question: “What do you want candidates to talk about as they compete for your vote?”
Tell us what you want candidates to talk about here. Cuéntanos de qué quieres que hablen los candidatos aquí.
So far, more than 4,500 Coloradans have answered that question. The vast majority to date self-identify as white and liberal or moderate and live along the densely populated—and deeply blue—Front Range. But voters in red, rural communities and purple suburbs are also responding. And lots of people have lots they want to say to politicians:
From Denver: “Housing, housing, housing. The cost of living is too high and it is primarily driven by the high cost of housing. We need to break down legal barriers and construct housing of all types, especially in dense urban areas and around transit.”
From Littleton: “Need to address returning Roe vs Wade. Such a big deal that made our country turn back time. No one should govern another person’s body. Period.”
From Aurora: “What would you do to reduce wealth inequity? Would you support/subsidize starter home-building initiatives? Would you support before and after school childcare for elementary students?”
From Colorado Springs: “Enshrining marriage equality in the Colorado constitution… LGBTQIA+ rights are at the top of my list. I identify as lesbian/queer, and my wife (they/them) is nonbinary and masc-presenting. The threat to our personal liberty from the right is terrifying.”
Joe Brooks, a 53-year-old father of elementary-school-age children who lives in Thornton, summed up a common sentiment while acknowledging political reality.. “I’d love to hear them talk more about what’s really really at stake, which is personal liberty and freedom. Everybody really wants that, but people disagree on how that looks.”
Among other highlights from the survey so far:
- Many self-identified conservatives, who chose immigration as their top concern, are calling for the closure of the southern border and the deportation of both recent asylum-seekers and people who’ve lived here long term without documentation.
- Those who identified as liberal named “abortion” as a top-three concern, closely followed by the economy and then social justice and equity.
- Young people, those 18-29, put the economy and cost of living in the No.1 spot, followed by democracy, then the environment. Social justice and equity comes up No.4. However, this group, like conservatives, is underrepresented in the responses so far.
- Survey respondents express much higher trust in the fairness of local elections than in national ones, but conservatives indicate far more distrust in both. Six in 10 self-identified conservatives say they have no confidence in the fairness of the national election and nearly a quarter express the same lack of faith in the local elections.
- Looking at survey responses overall, without accounting for political lean, urban, suburban and rural residents who responded to the survey share the same top concerns in the same order: Democracy, economy, environment, immigration and abortion. But rural respondents follow that up with “personal liberty” as their next-highest concern while urban and suburban residents named “social justice and equity.”
- While national politics dominate these bright-line questions, there is no shortage of questions about local concerns. People responding to their local newsrooms’ surveys are asking about traffic on Tower Road, Front Range air quality, rebuilding the Douglas County health department, homelessness on the Western Slope, health care on the Eastern Plains, land-use policies (everywhere), low-income housing for seniors in Mesa County, and workforce housing in Routt County.
- A note on the survey itself: This is not a scientific poll. Data on race and ethnicity was flawed and will be included in later stories.
One of the most striking takeaways from the survey so far is how many respondents answered the question of what they want candidates to talk about with how they want candidates to speak. Without rancor, without partisanship, posturing or platitudes, and with commitments to compromise, transparency and pragmatism.
“How they will get over petty partisan bickering and actually do the job they were elected to do,” Tim Samuelson, a 42-year-old self-described moderate who lives in Denver, wrote in his survey response. “Form policies together that aren’t fringe issues that the majority of the public doesn’t think about on a daily basis. Get to work, quit the gamesmanship.”
Put more bluntly by another survey respondent: “How they plan to fix this mess, not what a jackass the other guy is. We already know that.”
Hyper-partisanship is a perennial lament about politics. But the sharp — and sometimes plaintive — edge in the call for candidates to work together seems in part intensified by the sense among respondents that the stakes are just too high now to do otherwise.
That sentiment surfaces in the big-picture responses: democracy in peril, the planet in danger, our personal and civil liberties under attack. But anxiety also simmers in respondents’ day-to-day concerns, worries that can be summed up with: can’t buy a house, can’t afford rent, our roads are bad, our schools need help, farming is under threat, taxes are unfairly assessed and distributed, traffic is killing us, our healthcare system is broken, the gap between the haves and have-nots has become a chasm and I’m never, ever, making it to the other side.
In the face of all that, Samuelson, who is also the father of three young children whom he worries will grow up with fewer opportunities and more threats, finds the partisan sniping not simply intolerable, but irresponsible.
“I just get the feeling from so many politicians that it’s about being heard and seen and having that platform instead of the desire to govern,” he said in an interview.
Tina Griego is the managing editor of the Colorado News Collaborative, which is leading the Voter Voices project. Megan Verlee is the public affairs editor at Colorado Public Radio, the project’s lead partner.
