Colorado Democrats got new polling this week confirming that voters are beginning to suspect the party running Colorado may, in fact, bear some relationship to the Colorado they are currently living in.
The Denver Post reports that 55% of likely voters now think the economy will get worse over the next year, up from 46% in November, while Jared Polis, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper have all slid further into the zone political professionals call “concerning” and normal people call “maybe these people kind of suck now.”
The especially humiliating part for the state’s managerial class is that much of the backlash appears to be coming from Democrats themselves. Polis is now underwater at 44% favorable and 48% unfavorable. Bennet, who is running for governor, dropped from 45% favorable last year to 40% now, while his unfavorable number climbed from 31% to 39%. Hickenlooper, still somehow coasting on the ghost of a brewpub personality cult, has fallen to an even 43%-43% split.
“We’ve seen Democrats become quite frustrated with incumbent legislators and executives,” one pollster said, using the kind of careful language consultants deploy when the donor retreat starts sounding like a divorce mediation.
Bennet’s situation is particularly elegant. He is now in the difficult position of being famous enough for voters to know him and annoyed enough with the party to hold that against him. Phil Weiser, meanwhile, remains trapped in the opposite problem. The poll found him slightly positive, 26% favorable to 23% unfavorable, but 51% of respondents either had never heard of him or had no opinion, which is not ideal for a man trying to win a statewide primary unless his strategy is to be accidentally selected.
The economic numbers are where the article stops pretending anybody in charge still has the luxury of bullshit. More than 90% of voters said housing, health care, food, utilities, and home and car insurance are a problem. Seventy-five percent are very or extremely concerned about good-paying jobs. Forty-one percent now say gasoline is a very big problem, up from 17% a year ago, after prices jumped and the broader economy kept doing that thing where every errand costs like a minor felony.
One Republican pollster noted that the pessimism split more by education level than party, which is hilarious. The more educated voters were, the more likely they were to think the economy is getting worse, suggesting even Colorado’s most highly credentialed class of professional rationalizers is starting to have trouble calling this a messaging issue.
Then came the part that should make every tax-happy brainstormer at the Capitol break out in hives: TABOR is still popular. The poll found 62% view it favorably, including 63% of unaffiliated voters and even 48% of Democrats. So while the political class is cooking up fresh ways to rearrange the tax code, voters are still clinging to the one constitutional provision that says maybe the people who made life unaffordable should not automatically get more money.
Colorado’s ruling Democrats now face the terrifying possibility that voters have finally connected the cost of living with the people always on stage explaining why none of it is really their fault.
Source: The Denver Post
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