Colorado voters say that immigration is the top issue facing the country ahead of the 2024 election, a recent poll has found.
The poll of 632 likely voters, reported by the Colorado Polling Institute and conducted by Democratic pollster Aspect Strategic and Republican pollster New Bridge Strategy, found that 14% of voters said that immigration is the top issue that the state government should address. The issue beat homelessness at 12% and the lack of affordable housing at 11%, which respondents also provided as answers to the open-ended question.
“Immigration emerging as a top issue among voters in Colorado follows trends we are seeing in research nationally,” Republican pollster Lori Wiegel asserted. President Joe Biden still holds a 10% lead over former President Donald Trump in the state, however, with 49% of respondents saying that they will vote for the Democrat incumbent, with 39% saying they will support Trump in the November presidential election.
The poll comes as Denver has seen a drastic increase in the number of new arrivals, with nearly 41,000 migrants currently being served by the city of just over 700,000. The city has even asked landlords if they would be willing to house migrants. As many as 4,500 migrants were previously residing in the city’s homeless shelters as of January, though the figure has decreased in recent months.
The city of Denver begging landlords to house illegals:
"But if you know somebody who is a property owner or you yourself are [a property owner] willing to rent to migrants, we've got information how you can do that on https://t.co/XnVoasLyDn"
Continually hitting new lows. pic.twitter.com/iBDPKCsPS8— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) April 1, 2024
The poll of Colorado voters reflects a wider trend throughout the country, with a recent national poll performed by Harvard Harris and the Center for American Political Studies finding that voters say immigration is the top issue facing the country. The poll also found that Biden has his lowest issue-specific approval rating on immigration, a trend that has persisted for four consecutive months.
Another national poll, performed by the Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, found that a majority of Americans want to hire more Border Patrol agents and limit the number of migrants who are allowed to seek asylum.
The findings come as the United States faces an unprecedented border crisis with over 10 million crossing the border since Joe Biden took office. There have been over one million illegal immigrant encounters on the southern border in just the first six months of fiscal year 2024. There have also been an estimated 1.7 million illegal immigrant gotaways recorded since Biden took office in 2021. There were 415,000 total reported gotaways for 2018, 2019, and 2020 under the Trump administration.