You can expect sports betting to become legal and taxable in Colorado, but the jury is still out on a push at the ballot box this week to overturn the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) Amendment.
These are two top line findings of the fourth annual Colorado Political Climate Survey by the American Political Research Lab at CU Boulder.
According to the poll, 62% of registered voters said they would vote in favor of Proposition DD, which would legalize sports betting and funnel resulting tax revenues into water projects. Meantime, Proposition CC, which would dismantle the TABOR Amendment, remained too close to call, said Anand Sokhey, director of the American Political Research Lab.
“We expect Proposition DD to win handily,” Sokhey said. “Sixty-two percent of Colorado voters favor the measure, and the proposition garners big majorities among Democrats (71%) and independents (64%), and approaches a majority among Republicans (48%).”
As for Proposition CC, the TABOR question, the survey found that 50% of registered voters oppose it; 43% said they would vote in favor of it; and 7% said they were unsure. If passed, the measure would allow the state to keep all of the money it collects over its revenue limit to spend on education and transportation. Presently, TABOR requires the state to refund money to taxpayers if revenue exceeds the state’s population and inflation rates.
“These results give us a sneak peek into what voters are thinking as they conclude voting this week,” Sokhey said. “We’re eager to see the results.”
Generally speaking, TABOR continues to have relatively strong support in the state. The poll has asked registered voters if they support the measure for each of the past four years. Every year TABOR has consistently had more support than opposition -- between 45% to 53% said they supported it, while between 22% to 30% said they opposed it.
As for presidential politics, 56% of Colorado voters surveyed said they supported impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, and 37% said they opposed them. Not surprisingly, there were stark differences based on party affiliation, with the vast majority (89%) of Democrats supporting impeachment, and the vast majority (78%) of Republicans opposing it. Independents were fairly split on the impeachment question, with 47% supporting it; and 44% opposing it.
Undergraduates in a survey research class assisted with the survey. An extended report will follow in coming weeks that includes assessment of the Democratic presidential primaries and the primary contest for the Colorado Senate race, as well as our ongoing assessment of Coloradans’ stances on major policy issues and lawmakers.
The CPC is a survey of the political and policy attitudes of Coloradans, and is designed to gauge the public’s political and partisan leanings, their opinions on a number of key issues facing the state, and their attitudes toward major statewide and national political figures.
The survey instrument was developed by APRL in fall 2019 and was administered online to a panel of Coloradans by the company YouGov between Oct. 23 and Nov. 1, 2019. The sample is representative of registered voters in Colorado and consists of 800 individual responses with an overall simple random sample margin of error of +/- 3.5%. To account for the sampling approach, the final margin of error is slightly larger than the simple random sample margin of error and for the registered voter analysis is +/- 4.4% while the final margin of error for the general population analysis is +/- 4.6%. To generalize to the state of Colorado, YouGov employed a weighting procedure based on demographics and political characteristics.
Find the complete copy of the topline survey results and methodology.
