A growing number of Colorado voters say the state has a budget crisis — but it may not be for the reasons close observers of state politics might expect.
At Colorado SunFest 2026, pollsters with the nonpartisan Colorado Polling Institute said that Republicans — not Democrats — were far more likely to describe the budget as “in crisis,” even though Democratic leaders for years have tried to make the case that the state government doesn’t have enough money to fund social services like healthcare and education.
The findings come from a survey among 613 likely voters conducted in March by Republican group New Bridge Strategy and Aspect Strategic, a Democratic firm, on behalf of the nonprofit Colorado Polling Institute.
Leaders from the two firms were featured on a panel discussion last week at The Colorado Sun’s annual conference at the University of Denver. Sun elections editor Jesse Paul co-moderated the discussion with Seth Masket, a political science professor at DU.
Lori Weigel, director of New Bridge Strategy, said she suspects national politics play an outsized role in voters’ views of government finances. Recent headlines about Elon Musk and the Trump administration’s campaign at the federal level to cut spending and eliminate waste may have primed Republican voters to question government spending at all levels.
“Part of the problem that we’re seeing today is that issues are so nationalized that it bleeds into their perceptions of the state as well,” Weigel said of voters. “They’re just muddling all levels of government together into this big black box that says they’re not spending the money efficiently.”
Among all likely voters, respondents were equally split over Colorado’s budget troubles, with 42% saying the budget is in crisis — a big increase from the same time in 2025, when just 30% described it in such dire terms.
In this year’s poll, another 42% said the budget has some problems, but isn’t facing a crisis. The remaining 8% told pollsters the budget was in pretty good shape.
The poll had a 3.96 percentage point margin of error.
Among Republicans, 55% described the budget as “in crisis,” while just 27% of Democrats said the same. Unaffiliateds make up the majority of registered voters. They were evenly split, with 42% saying the budget’s in crisis, and 43% saying it only has some problems.
When voters are directly affected by cuts — say, to Medicaid — Weigel said, “that becomes the more visceral reaction, and that’s where it starts to become, ‘oh, it’s in a crisis, because it’s affecting me or it’s affecting people I know.’
“I have to tell people sometimes, you have to actually lock the doors on the library or do something dramatic or they’re not going to know you have a budget problem,” she added.
The partisan divide may complicate efforts by the political left to raise money at the ballot this year to address the state budget crunch.
While Republican voters are more likely to think the state faces a budget crisis, they’re also more likely than Democrats to say their taxes are too high. And, they’re more likely to support the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the state constitutional amendment that limits government spending and requires voter approval for tax increases.
TABOR is popular across party lines, Weigel said, with 62% of all likely voters saying they have favorable opinions of it. That jumps to 74% of Republicans, and 63% of unaffiliated voters. Among Democrats, 48% view TABOR favorably.
But that support for TABOR shouldn’t be interpreted as agreeing with everything it does, she added.
“The things that they tend to think about are, ‘oh, I get to vote on tax measures.’ Or, sometimes somebody sends me a check and says ‘here’s some money,’” Weigel said. “That doesn’t sound so bad if those are the two things that you think most about in terms of TABOR.”
Democratic lawmakers are advancing a bill backed by the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, to ask voters to allow the state to keep revenue collected over the state spending cap and direct it to schools instead of giving the money back to taxpayers through TABOR refunds. A coalition of liberal groups is also working on a measure to institute a graduated income tax that raises taxes on households that make more than $500,000 a year.
One of TABOR’s lesser known provisions prohibits the state from imposing higher taxes on people who make more money.
“I think what we’re seeing is that there’s not a great deal of depth,” Weigel said. “People feel passionately one side or the other and either want to keep it or think it’s the worst thing ever. But, those are very, very small proportions of the electorate that are that well-versed.”
You can read more about the poll from The Sun’s previous coverage here.