Colorado Proposition HH poll shows mixed support, opposition

Colorado voters appear to favor a far-reaching ballot initiative aimed at property taxes, education funding, and TABOR tax refunds but, a recent poll found, they could be swayed.

Voters will decide on Proposition HH this November. If it passes, it would change how property tax is calculated — potentially saving property owners hundreds of dollars a year they’d owe otherwise, though overall property taxes would likely still increase — while also upping how much money the state can keep under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, for the next decade.

Its other provisions include an expansion of the homestead exemption, and set aside money for the state education fund and a rental assistance program. It would also trigger a one-year flattening of TABOR refunds for the next year, sending lower-income Coloradans about an extra $160 or more by cutting into higher-income Coloradans’ refunds, according to state forecasts.

Most voters — nearly two-thirds, or 64%, according to the poll — said they aren’t too familiar or not familiar at all with the proposal as of late June and early July, when pollsters conducted interviews. Magellan Strategies, based in Louisville, paid for and conducted the poll. It’s the first public poll to gauge support for the measure.

A majority, though, said they’d either definitely or probably approve of Proposition HH after reading the ballot language. It’s after they learn more about it — long-term effects on the state budget and TABOR refunds, temporary flattening of TABOR refunds, details of how it would backfill local governments, and rental assistance among them — that support dips below that threshold.

Approval for the measure goes from 54% when respondents just read the ballot measure to 43% when they hear more. Undecided voters remain near static, at 12% and 11%, respectively. However, 71% of all respondents said they’re still ultimately undecided.

“I wouldn’t call HH a dead goner by any means,” pollster David Flaherty said. “Put it in the toss-up category, and wait and see how the masters of the universe and those with all the money decide to support or fight this thing.”

The poll didn’t seek to influence voters or test messages, Flaherty said, but sought to gauge people’s opinions as they learned more. He acknowledged it as a tough needle to thread and that some angles, such as school funding, weren’t explicitly polled because the firm didn’t have solid projections on the measure’s effects.

“Right now, this thing is just a Rubik’s Cube,” Flaherty said. “It has its supporters. On a cold reading of it, you have the majority, but as people learn more about it, it gets complex.”

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. The firm conducted an online survey of 662 Coloradans likely to vote in the November election. Magellan has a B/C rating from poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight.