Solid majorities of voters on both sides of the political aisle in Colorado’s tightly split 8th Congressional District favor stricter government regulations and tax incentives to combat environmental challenges like air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
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That’s according to the latest poll results released Thursday by the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, which surveyed voters in battleground districts across the country earlier this year — including the one north of Denver pitting Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans against Democratic challenger Manny Rutinel.
“What we’ve consistently found nationally, and now in the battlegrounds, is that large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans want government action to reduce emissions and air pollution using a combination of tax incentives, regulations and international cooperation,” Steven Kull, the director of the university’s Program for Public Consultation, said in a statement.
The 8th District poll, conducted in May and June, included 500 voters. It has found general agreement on a number of hot-button issues among those who lean Republican or Democratic. That has included a wariness of unbridled artificial intelligence development, a desire for a bigger governmental role in healthcare and support for a less draconian approach to immigration enforcement than what the Trump administration has pursued.
A similar bipartisan alignment was discovered when it comes to protecting the environment.
Poll numbers released this week show that 91% of those who lean Democratic and 80% who lean Republican in the district say reducing air pollution should be “a high priority” for the government
Ninety-two percent of Democrats and 70% Republican voters in the district told the pollster that the United States should set a goal of reducing emissions by 2% per year. A similar partisan split (96% among Democratic leaners, 76% among Republican leaners) showed support for the U.S. working with other countries to reduce emissions.
That relative unanimity in a swing district that has elected representatives from both major parties in just the last four years could present problems for Evans, whose party is led by a president who has repeatedly tried to kill wind power projects, has spiked tax credits for electric vehicles and has twice withdrawn the country from the 2015 Paris climate accord.
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Rutinel, his Democratic opponent and a former state representative, has attacked Evans mostly on the economic front, where rising energy prices from the Iran war pursued by President Donald Trump have kept inflation at the forefront of the political debate this election cycle.
Rutinel, who resigned from the state legislature this month to focus on his congressional race, once supported a ban on fracking but has since backed off that position. A large portion of the 8th District, which takes in Denver’s north suburbs and Greeley, is in the heart of Colorado’s oil and gas country.
The University of Maryland’s survey also showed that 94% of Democratic-leaning voters and 76% of Republican-leaning voters in the 8th favor tax credits for solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear energy.
Meanwhile, 81% of voters in the district want the government to require that new cars get more miles per gallon of gasoline, with just a 10-percentage-point difference between the large majorities of Democrats and Republicans who feel that way, according to the poll.
Late last year, the Trump administration proposed substantially weakening fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles from the levels the Biden administration established.
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