Voters in the Mountain West region are increasingly concerned about the state of public lands heading into the midterm elections, according to a wide-ranging new poll.
The 16th Conservation in the West poll by Colorado College surveyed more than 3,000 voters across the political spectrum in January from Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Montana.
85% of respondents said public lands, water, and wildlife are important factors in deciding their vote. That puts conservation on par with other key election issues, said Lori Weigel, the principal of New Bridge Strategy who worked on the survey.
"Like the economy, healthcare and education — sort of the perennials out there. Conservation is clearly right in that mix of important issues," she said.
In Utah specifically, 70% of respondents said inadequate water supply is a serious problem, and 74% opposed fast-tracking oil, gas, and mining projects on national public lands by reducing environmental reviews and local public input.
The results show that the environment is increasing in its election importance, up 10 percentage points from a decade ago, even amid growing affordability concerns in the region.
Other poll findings:
- 84% of voters said the rollback of laws that protect land, water, and wildlife is a serious problem
- Solar was the energy source Western voters most wanted to prioritize, while coal was the lowest
- Wyoming was the only Mountain West state where voters said fossil fuel energy sources and mining were a higher priority than renewables
- 76% of Western voters opposed selling public lands for housing
- 87% were concerned about inadequate water supplies, with the highest levels of concern in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico
Bipartisan sentiment
The poll also suggested burgeoning support for conservation among Republicans. 62% now said that it's more important for Congress to protect public lands for clean water, air quality, wildlife habitat, and recreation than to maximize their energy production, up from 48% in 2019.
Republican support for existing national monument protections increased from 83% last year to 87% this year. Opposition to public lands funding cuts was also up from last year, with 77% of Republicans and three-quarters of those who identify with the "Make America Great Again" movement expressing it was a serious problem.
This could be in response to the Trump administration's mass layoffs over the past year. National Park Service advocates, for example, said the agency lost about a quarter of its permanent staff as a result of probationary employee cuts and pushes for early retirement.
The White House proposed more budget slashes, which Congress ultimately rejected.
"Now that things are happening, the level of concern is very different," Weigel said. "It's something where we're just seeing greater intensity, even compared to the first Trump administration, where people are just saying these funding cuts are really a problem."
Although the poll indicated that support for public lands and conservation spans political affiliation, voters increasingly had the perception that these were partisan issues.
A decade ago, just 10% said partisanship over lands, waters, and wildlife concerns would make it hard to get things done. In this year's poll, that jumped to more than a third of voters.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
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