U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse leads three other Colorado Democrats in an early poll of potential candidates for the party’s 2026 gubernatorial primary that shows the largest slice of respondents are still undecided.
The early December survey of 630 registered voters was released Monday. In the results, 20% of respondents told pollster Magellan Strategies that they probably or definitely would vote for Neguse, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House, if the June 2026 Democratic primary was held now. That was ahead of 16% support for Secretary of State Jena Griswold; 11% for Ken Salazar, a longtime Colorado politico who now serves as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico; and 8% for Attorney General Phil Weiser.
Thirty-seven percent of polls respondents said they were undecided, and 8% said they planned to support a candidate other than the four specifically posed.
None of the four named candidates has formally entered the gubernatorial race. Griswold and Weiser are term-limited from running again for their current offices. All four have long been rumored to be eying a run to succeed Democratic Gov. Jared Polis when he is term-limited out of office after 2026.
The survey was conducted Dec. 4-9 by Magellan, a Broomfield-based pollster, and it was released by the nonprofit policy advocacy group Healthier Colorado. Magellan surveyed 630 registered voters, 62% of them Democrats and 38% unaffiliated voters; the sample was weighted to reflect typical turnout in a midterm Democratic primary in Colorado.
The results had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points, and more than 40% of respondents were 60 or older.
Griswold and Weiser were both elected to statewide office alongside Polis in 2018 and 2022. Salazar previously served as the interior secretary under then-President Barack Obama, and he was Colorado’s attorney general and then a U.S. senator before he joined the Obama administration. President Joe Biden nominated him as ambassador to Mexico in 2021.
In a statement, Weiser said he was focused on “defeating” the Albertson’s-Kroger merger and on “preparing to defend Colorado from challenges we expect in the coming year,” as former President Donald Trump returns to office.
Griswold, in a statement, said she was focused on her current office and being a new mother, as well as “standing up” to Trump through her public service in coming years. “I have not decided how that service will look beyond 2026,” she wrote.
A representative of Neguse, who represents the 2nd Congressional District, did not provide comment Monday. An email directed to Salazar via the U.S. State Department was not returned.
Eighteen months before the primary, the poll results showed voters had overall favorable views of all four candidates, though Griswold had both the highest shares of favorable and unfavorable results. Eighty percent of respondents had heard of Salazar, the highest share of the four, with Griswold second with 77%.
Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they had never heard of either Neguse or Weiser, though Neguse still had the largest share of respondents who viewed him very favorably.
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