Tag: Tom Jensen

Results of a recent survey (pdf) bolster evidence that Coloradans by a wide majority support same-sex civil unions. The news comes in the wake of a standoff at the statehouse last month in which House Republicans killed a bill that would have established civil unions here. The pollster, Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling, tied the data on civil unions to the fact that the Republican Party in Colorado seems to be steadily losing support.

A recent survey of Colorado voters shows likely Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney making slight gains in the state, mostly among unaffiliated voters, but still trailing Pres. Obama overall, and especially among young people, women and Latino voters.

For years, credible surveys conducted among Colorado voters have found opinion in the state swinging strongly in favor of legal relationship recognition for gay couples. Results released Friday by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling show the strongest support yet. Coloradans, according to a poll conducted last week (pdf), support a civil unions bill presently being considered by the state legislature by a whopping 30-point spread.

President Obama is not a popular politician in Colorado but, according to a recent Public Policy Polling survey, Obama would defeat in a landslide Republican Newt Gingrich, whose star has risen of late but who boasts laughable negative numbers with voters here and is despised by the state's enormous percentage of independent voters.

John Hickenlooper is an officeholder and a politician and yet he is well liked among the public. According to a survey conducted by Public Policy Polling last weekend, Colorado's Democratic governor garners a 54 percent approval rating and only a 24 percent disapproval rating, a remarkable 30 point spread. Democrats love him, independents love him and Republicans think he's OK. In other words, Hickenlooper is an odd fish, the Greenback Cutthroat Trout of 2011 U.S. politics, a compellingly strange-looking and endangered species.

Public Policy Polling this week released survey results that showed likely 2012 voters in Colorado mostly held congressional Republicans to blame for the unpopular debt deal reached in Washington and that they so far strongly preferred President Obama to any likely Republican rival. Critics of the survey howled that left-leaning PPP had skewed the results by oversampling Democratic voters in the state. Yes, PPP surveyed more Democrats than it did either Republicans or Independents, all pretty much registered to vote in equal numbers in the state, Director Tom Jensen told the Colorado Independent, and that apparent oversampling is driven not by pollster ideological bias but by the self-selecting pattern established by Colorado citizens polled-- and, he said, that's why PPP numbers have been proven highly reliable over the last two elections.

Americans are deeply dissatisfied with officeholders across the political spectrum, and in swing-state Colorado, a key battleground for next year's presidential election, the hot enthusiasm generated here by candidate Obama three years ago has cooled considerably, according to a new survey conducted by Public Policy Polling. Although, the methodology of the poll has rightly come under scrutiny (same as every poll), given the historically dismal economy and the battering Obama has taken on the right since he entered the White House, it's remarkable that PPP pollsters found he nevertheless notched double-digit leads in the state over every potential GOP opponent except Mitt Romney, whom he leads here by 7 points.

Reporting the story of recently defeated Colorado civil unions bill SB 172, National Catholic Register reporter Steve Weatherbe Monday called a poll showing popular support for civil unions in the state "specious." But Weatherbe got the facts wrong on pro-civil unions polling in Colorado and he leans instead on an alleged "recent poll" conducted for Christian politics group Colorado Family Action by a company called Advantage Inc, which the Washington Post reportedly describes as a "Republican fundraising and marketing firm." Colorado Family Action says it shared its polling results with Republican members of the state House Judicial Committee who voted to kill the bill at the end of March.

Discontented voters who swept an historic Republican majority into the House last November are ready to sweep out that majority just as dramatically, according to a survey released Tuesday (pdf) by Public Policy Polling. The Republicans, who have been pushing deep spending cuts and controversial anti-abortion and anti-gay rights policies since January, have apparently alienated the independent swing voters who put them in power.

Hollywood-comedy-writer-turned-news-satirist Andy Borowitz takes aim today at the alternative reality created at Fox News. "Afraid to Watch the News, Millions Turn to Fox... Channel Offers Welcome Break from Reality, Psychologists Say." Borowitz's jab comes with extra sting in light of Public Policy Polling's recent survey of Republican voters. According to the March 15 poll, 25 percent of Republicans -- i.e., 80 percent of Fox watchers-- believe that the no-longer-existing low-income housing and voter registration group ACORN will steal the 2012 presidential election for Barack Obama.