A recent poll showed that Colorado voters are more concerned with rising house prices than they are with jobs and the economy which will be interesting as these voters head to the polls next month.
You can read the whole story by Ed Sealover below or in the Denver Business Journal.
Colorado’s booming economy has reached the point where voters are more concerned about one of the negative effects of growth — skyrocketing housing costs — than they are with the economy and jobs in general, according to a new poll of residents’ top issues heading into the November election.
While 14 percent of the more than 1,800 residents polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Colorado Health Foundation cited jobs and the economy as a top issue in the gubernatorial race, 18 percent listed housing costs as a major concern. Both of those trailed education and health care, which each garnered notations from 21 percent of respondents as a top issue.
Kyle Legleiter, senior director of policy and advocacy for the health foundation, noted that very few people who took the survey from mid-August through mid-September identified themselves as being unemployed. But particularly respondents who make less than $40,000 a year said it was getting harder to save money for education or retirement while paying for rent or mortgage costs, replacing one-time worries about whether they could find or keep a job with new concerns that they will not be able to find or keep housing.
“Even when people have jobs, they are concerned about being able to pay for homes,” Legleiter said. “People are working. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they have what they need within reach.”
The survey — the first of its kind this election season that has focused on issues driving the closely contested open-seat gubernatorial race between Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and Republican Treasurer Walker Stapleton rather than on how people will vote in the contest — showed both a divide between voters on what is most important to them and similarities in the general actions that Coloradans want the next state leader to take. Ballots begin hitting the mail on Monday, and state residents can vote up until Nov. 6.
Democratic voters, for example, overwhelmingly listed health care (33 percent), education (29 percent) and housing costs (23 percent) as their top issues. Republicans, meanwhile, ranked immigration (20 percent) first, followed by the economy and jobs (17 percent) and housing costs (14 percent) before education and health care (both 12 percent).
