Brad Jones
@bradjones
Author of Colorado's Political Landscape (). Senior Research Director, YouGov; Formerly Meta; Even more formerly Pew Research Center
So far this year, Coloradans are on track to break records in the total amount wagered online on sports. Every year since 2021 (the first full year where online sports betting was legal), Coloradans have set new records in terms of total wagers. www.co-political-landscape.org/1-billion-on...
Another story out of this data is the growing popularity of parlay bets (bets placed on multiple outcomes within a single game or across several). These are extremely risky bets and are the most profitable bets for the gambling companies.
Did you know that Coloradans have wagered more than $1B on table tennis since 2020? I sure didn't. Sports betting is a little bit of a foreign topic for me, but it was eye-opening digging into the numbers. www.co-political-landscape.org/1-billion-on...
For those with eyes to see, Jimothy has been in the animal crackers this whole time...
What a tremendous gift Carol Lynn Pearson was to the Mormon community. She leaves big shoes to fill. One of my favorites that I come back to periodically: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTK-... (full text in the alt text). Rest in peace.
I've got a post up today looking at the "cast vote records" in Denver county (which contains almost all of CD-01 where Melat Kiros won in June). #copolitics www.co-political-landscape.org/cast-vote-re...
Super interesting new report from @pewresearch.org on clusters of news consumers. There is a clear relationship between age and these groups, but the share that are most active ('mobilizers') and the least active ('outsiders') are basically unrelated to age. www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2...
I'm sure others have pointed this out, but I was shocked when I saw how dramatically outside the norm the 2025/2026 winter was for Colorado snowpack: Each line in the graphic below shows the snow water equivalent in the Colorado mountains. 1/
I feel like I'm more willing than most to recognize that political leaders need to make difficult decisions that are going to make some people upset, but Polis seems in a league of his own in terms of legacy-destroying choices...
Thinking a lot about the wise words of V. O. Key for no particular reason: "The voice of the people is but an echo" la.utexas.edu/users/jmcive...
Not a lot of big surprises here: Kiros was strongest in Hispanic parts of the district, places where larger numbers of young people, and more economically disadvantaged parts of the district (see the post for some nuance in how to interpret these graphs)
Despite a being outspent by an enormous margin, the relatively establishment candidate in the Republican race for the nomination, Barb Kirkmeyer, is holding a lead. It is possible that later ballots will swing against her. Still too early to call.
So far, it is an east/west divide in Denver with western precincts going to Kiros and eastern for DeGette: #copolitics
One alarming trend in the data is the increasing share of traffic killings that are pedestrians or cyclists. In Colorado, the share of pedestrians and cyclists who are killed on our roads has about doubled over the past 20 years. This mirrors a national increase.
Does anyone have details on the polling that Justice Democrats is sponsoring in CO-1? I'm seeing screenshots and slick infographics, but no methods statements. Polling individual congressional districts well is extraordinarily difficult, and the lack of transparency is a red flag. #copolitics
Pew's new political typology report is worth spending a few minutes with. I found this graphic particularly striking which highlights the divisions within the parties on views of Palestinians and Israelis. www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...
I develop a measure of legislative effectiveness for the state legislature. There is a modest relationship between district partisanship and legislative productivity among Democrats. See the post for details of how the measure was constructed: www.co-political-landscape.org/the-2026-sta... (2/2)
We don't see the same pattern when we look at how each campaign is doing with donors to the campaigns for attorney general for Weiser.
Interestingly @philforcolorado.bsky.social 's campaign is doing about as well getting donors who contributed to @michaelbennet.bsky.social 's campaigns for senate as Bennet is himself. (see the alt text for notes)
Colorado, like most places in the country, has a strong urban/rural political divide where people in more rural places tend to hold more conservative attitudes. Interestingly, despite a substantial partisan gap in views about data centers, there is no urban/rural divide
New analysis highlighting some interesting findings from the latest Colorado Polling Institute survey: tl;dr Coloradans are not enthusiastic about data centers www.co-political-landscape.org/coloradans-a... #copolitics
I am very much enjoying @anneleckie.com's Translation State. It is making me want to reread the ancillary series.
To all who celebrate: Happy Easter! A season of hope in dark times that reminds us that the future is possible. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54587/... (I very much recommend going to the link above so you can hear a recording of Clifton reading her poem)
To be clear, for all the movement they've made over the past two decades, they are still the second most Republican leaning religious grouping we looked at. yougov.com/en-us/articl...
My report on changing partisanship looks also at religious tradition. As with most other analytic lenses you can apply to this data, the trend is away from the Democratic Party over the past 20 years. Two exceptions: Mormons and atheists. yougov.com/en-us/articl...
In my new report on partisanship, I show movement away from the Democratic Party across a broad range of demographic groups. Looking back at the ANES, this is just the most recent piece of a *much* longer trend. yougov.com/en-us/articl...