It turns out that voters in Colorado’s closely divided 8th Congressional District want more Medicaid spending, a resurrection of Affordable Care Act subsidies and a government cap on drug prices.
And there is little partisan divide on the matter, recently released polling conducted by the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, through its Program for Public Consultation, show.
Well over half of Republicans and GOP-leaning voters in the 8th District said the federal government’s role in healthcare should expand and programs like Medicaid be made more generous. That was generally in line with how Democrats answered the questions.
Specifically, 70% of Republican voters in the district said increased Obamacare subsidies should be renewed, 61% said spending on Medicaid should go up and cover more people and 72% of Republicans said Americans should be able to buy into a “government-run public option,” according to the polling results.
Ninety-one percent of Republicans in the 8th District also favored the government setting maximum prices for drugs sold in the United States, based on what the drugs cost in other developed countries.
“We’re seeing nationally and in the 8th Congressional District a kind of moderating on the question of whether the government should play a role in healthcare,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation. “The central dynamic is that the cost of things is too high and that the government should do something about it.”
That puts U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Fort Lupton Republican, in a tough spot as he nears the end of his first term representing the district that takes in three counties north of Denver.
Evans, who barely won his first election in the evenly divided district in 2024, voted in favor of President Trump’s massive tax-cutting bill last year, which public health experts have said will cut Medicaid funding in Colorado and tighten up eligibility standards, potentially tossing thousands of Coloradans from the program meant to assist low-income Americans in paying for healthcare.
“These poll results underscore the affordability issue writ large and the fact that inflation has crossed party lines,” independent political analyst Eric Sondermann said.
Evans’ Democratic opponent, state Rep. Manny Rutinel, often highlighted cuts to the federal health program from the tax bill while on the campaign trail ahead of the June 30 primary.
“I grew up on Medicaid,” Rutinel told The Denver Post last week. “So it’s personal that Gabe Evans voted for Trump’s Medicaid cuts that take healthcare away from over 100,000 Coloradans to give tax breaks to his billionaire donors.”
Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made a “five-figure buy” of ads on Facebook and Instagram targeting 8th District voters over health costs in the lead-up to the November election.
“Hundreds of thousands of Coloradans could lose their healthcare, at least 12 in-state hospitals could close, and virtually every Colorado family could see their health care bills go up because of Evans’ disastrous agenda,” said DCCC spokeswoman Lindsay Reilly.
House Majority Forward, a national group linked to House Democratic leadership, also launched a Spanish-language TV ad in Colorado this month targeting Evans over his vote last year. The 8th Congressional District is Colorado’s most heavily Latino.
Evans countered that Democrats “continue to fearmonger and spread disinformation” about the law once known as the One Big Beautiful Bill.
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“The reality is this: In 2026 the federal government will spend more on Medicaid than it did in 2025, and it will spend more in 2027 than it did this year,” Evans said.
The tax bill he voted for, he said, puts Medicaid and other human services programs on a “more sustainable path that will ensure these programs are protected for future generations.” That’s largely accomplished, Evans said, by “rooting out waste, fraud and abuse … ensuring that only American citizens can receive these benefits and implementing common sense work requirements.”
Democrats have their own challenges on healthcare spending, which could muddy their messaging as November approaches. Waste and fraud in Colorado’s Medicaid program has been on full display under the party’s leadership.
From a program that provides rides for Medicaid patients to and from medical appointments, which was overbilled by hundreds of millions of dollars, to Medicaid overpayments of nearly $78 million for autism services in 2022 and 2023, Democratic state lawmakers have grappled with how to contain runaway costs.
Kim Bimestefer, who led Colorado’s Medicaid program as head of the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, announced her resignation in March after state lawmakers called for her dismissal following frustration with how the program was being managed.
The following month, the legislature set aside money to stand up a working group charged with doing a “deep dive” into the state’s massive Medicaid program.
But how voters will weigh money wasted in Medicaid against Trump’s overall cuts to the program could determine who gets to represent the 8th District in the next Congress. A ballooning federal debt usually takes a back seat to benefits in hand, Kull said.
“Once you put something in place, people get used to it and it’s hard to take away,” he said of the Obamacare subsidies that were revoked under last year’s tax bill.
And that will make it hard for Evans even if he has a solid case to make about mismanagement of Medicaid by Democrats, Sondermann said.
“You care about waste and fraud but mainly you want your benefits,” he said of the district’s voters.
And in a district where Democrat Yadira Caraveo won by a razor thin margin in 2022, only to be defeated by Evans in a similarly close contest two years later, every vote counts. That’s especially true of the district’s sizable and crucial unaffiliated voter base, Sondermann said.
“These polling results don’t mean that all Republicans are going to fill the box for Manny Rutinel,” he said. “But there’s an opportunity for Manny to pick off a few of these independent voters.”
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