This year’s annual reputational survey shows Colorado voters’ opinions of CU Boulder have improved upon previous standings. This improvement may stem from an increase in overall awareness of the university. This year marks the sixth year CU Boulder has participated in Drake Research’s OmniPoll—an omnibus phone survey conducted annually among Colorado voters each January. This year the survey reached a representative sample of 505 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points.
Currently, 64 percent of voters have a positive opinion of CU Boulder, with 35 percent who have a very positive opinion. This year’s rebound showed marked improvement from 2018, when 25 percent had a very positive opinion (a 10-point improvement) and 54 percent were positive overall.
A solid majority of voters said they did not see any news or ads about CU Boulder in the months leading up to last year’s survey. This year that trend was reversed with a majority now saying they did see news or ads about CU Boulder, returning back to 2016 levels. Importantly, consistent with year-over-year data, when voters saw news about CU Boulder, majorities tended to remember it being about something good.
And, particularly salient to campus communicators, overall exposure and especially to good news, impacts whether a voter has a positive or negative opinion toward CU Boulder. Voters who saw good news (59 percent very positive to CU Boulder) were 37 points more likely to have a very positive opinion than voters who had no exposure to CU Boulder news or ads (22 percent very positive).
Of course, more detailed deep-dives of the data including demographic and geographic differences will be offered during communicator meetings in the months to come.