Photo by Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado
This story was first published at Colorado Newsline.
DENVER | A large share of unaffiliated Colorado voters do not trust the Democratic or Republican political parties, and they value their electoral flexibility in primary elections, according to results from a recent poll backed by the multimillionaire businessman Kent Thiry.
Thirty-eight percent of unaffiliated voters reported dislike or distrust with both mainstream political parties and 30% cited distaste of the two-party system as the reason they have not registered with a political party, according to the poll, conducted by Keating Research for Let Colorado Vote, Thiry’s organization focused on ballot measures related to election participation.
“What clearly comes across is that independents are very unhappy with both parties,” Thiry told reporters Thursday. The poll referred to unaffiliated voters as independent voters.
Thiry has spearheaded some of Colorado’s most impactful electoral changes in recent years, including the state’s independent redistricting committees and an open primary system where unaffiliated voters can cast a ballot in one or another party’s elections. Last year, Thiry backed an unsuccessful attempt to eliminate party-based primary elections and move general elections to ranked-choice voting.
Let Colorado Vote commissioned the poll in anticipation of unaffiliated active voters becoming a majority of voters in the state.
The poll of 1,210 active voters in Colorado, including 600 unaffiliated voters, was conducted from Nov. 9 to Nov. 17 by Keating Research. About half of voters in Colorado are unaffiliated, and that registration category has grown by over 3% since the start of the year.
“I think people think that with automatic voter registration, people just become independent and not registered with a party. But this is an active action by these independents,” pollster Chris Keating said.
People who become automatically registered through the Division of Motor Vehicles, such as when they get a Colorado driver’s license, get marked as an unaffiliated voter. They need to take an extra step to affiliate with a major political party. The pollsters assert, however, that those voters are making an active choice to not register with a party and instead remain unaffiliated because of their political values. The poll found that 54% of unaffiliated voters view themselves as “independent.”
The poll found that about 25% of unaffiliated voters were once registered Democrats, 21% were once Republicans and about half have never belonged to a political party in the state.
Trump disapproval
Unaffiliated voters favor a Democratic candidate for Congress next year over a Republican by 14 points, and they tend to trust Democrats more on issues including the environment, health care, education and voting issues. They trust Republicans more on crime and are near split on the issues of immigration and cost of living.
At the same time, the poll found that 56% of unaffiliated voters hold unfavorable views towards the Democratic Party, while 57% are unfavorable towards the Republican Party.
Sixty-two percent disapprove of President Donald Trump. Nearly two-thirds of the voting bloc want to see both parties become more moderate, though the poll did not explore what that means to specific voters.
“For the Democratic Party, what this means is they need to avoid, stop and begin to reverse their march to the far left,” Thiry said.
The poll also found that 66% of voters aged 18 to 34 are unaffiliated, the largest share among any age group.
“You talk to these people who are 24 (years old) and they look at what they’ve seen in the last eight years of their life,” Thiry said. “This current system seems to be awfully broken.”
I do not believe that unaffiliated voters are as independent as one might assume. They likely vote for candidates from the same party time and time again. I also do not believe that voters want candidates who are moderate in attitudes. Our political climate is highly polarized and many view us as in a war of good against evil. We are not looking for some weak, spineless “milk toast” candidate to represent our positions. We are looking for a warrior who will “take no prisoners” in our battle for righteousness. Just look at the language our preferred candidates use on the campaign trail. They don’t talk about compromise, cooperation and accommodation. Everything is fight for this, fight for that, fight, fight, fight! To suggest that voters are looking for moderate candidates is another example of where peoples words don’t match their actions. If we want to know why are politicians are the way they are, we only need to look into the mirror.
Editor: Thank you for publishing this and finally acknowledging that a plurality of 49% are Unaffiliated and generally seek moderation— not the extreme liberal or conservative direction that red and blue seek to ram down our throats.
We love both sides of our extended families and will reject anyone that tries to get us to hate either side of our families. Remember this.
Want more civility and a stronger democracy? Don’t be anyone’s safe vote. Keep your values but drop your party affiliation. It will also improve your vision and critical thinking. You’ll start seeing the performance of our elected leaders with a cold, objective eye .
Editor: Thank you for publishing this and finally acknowledging that a plurality of 49% are Unaffiliated and generally seek moderation— not the extreme liberal or conservative direction that red and blue seek to ram down our throats.
We love both sides of our extended families and will reject anyone that tries to get us to hate either. Remember this.
Want more civility and a stronger democracy? Don’t be anyone’s safe vote. Keep your values but drop your party affiliation. It will also improve your vision and critical thinking. You’ll start seeing the performance of our elected leaders with a cold, objective eye— instead of accepting or forgiving the partisan rhetoric.
This is what is called a “push poll”. It’s when someone runs a bad poll that is designed to really be an advertisement for their own view and create a fake statistic that supports their own view. The questions in this poll were phrased in such a way that it tricked people or illogically forced people to pick between bad options. Ken Thiry is a billionaire with an agenda – he wants politicians to move to the middle because it serves his business interests and his own power. He bought this poll to scare politicians away from defying him.