A Gazette news report this week on a sweeping, new survey of Coloradans opens with some helpful context — noting for readers that almost half the state’s registered voters are now unaffiliated. 

So, it’s probably no surprise a near-majority of the survey’s respondents regard the policies and politicians of both major political parties as off putting. And it may also explain respondents’ dim view of the state’s current crop of elected leaders, who all happen to be Democrats. 

Surprising or not, it’s a wakeup call for any politicians willing to listen. 

Fully 52% disapproved of Gov. Jared Polis while Colorado U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper got only 38% and 37% approval ratings, respectively. The state legislature’s approval rating was hardly better at 39%.

And Coloradans see their state going adrift in general, according to a survey metric always closely watched by pollsters: 53% of Colorado voters believe the state is “headed in the wrong direction.”

Only the remaining two quarters of the state’s electorate — comprising the Democratic and Republican voting blocs — expressed enthusiasm for their respective politicos and platforms. But it is the unaffiliated voters whose opinions matter most; they dictate the outcome of Colorado elections. 

The respected Magellan Strategies survey of voters statewide, conducted in late July and early August, reaffirmed state data on party affiliation: 49% of respondents identified as unaffiliated, dwarfing the 26% who were Democrats and 23% who were Republicans. And it is telling that the rapidly rising number of voters who wish a pox on both parties soon will constitute a majority in the Centennial State.

To be sure, the trove of wide-ranging data gleaned by Magellan doesn’t point to any advantage for the GOP as a party in Colorado, nor does it necessarily portend of brighter prospects for its candidates in a state where statewide races have come to be dominated by Democrats. 

Yet, some of the noteworthy findings do strongly suggest the Democrats are dominant only by default — not because they’ve won hearts and minds.

While almost 60% of all respondents said they disapprove of the job President Donald Trump has done thus far — no shocker in a state Trump lost by 14 percentage points last November to Democrat Kamala Harris — Democrats as a party fared even worse in the Magellan survey. Some 68% said they had an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party, citing poor leadership and a lack of direction in recent years as well as the belief that Democratic policies often constituted government overreach and imposed too much spending.

It’s a telling takeaway. 

It’s one thing for voters to define Republicans in context of a distant, yet often-polarizing president who never has been popular in Colorado. He’s the only “Republican” who comes to mind for a lot of voters in a state where no Republicans have held statewide office in years. 

But it’s another matter when over two-thirds of the state’s voters give a thumbs-down to the party in power. Colorado’s governor has been a Democrat since 2007. Both of Colorado’s U.S. senators and all its state-level elected officials are Democrats, and each legislative chamber at the State Capitol is only a vote or two shy of a Democratic super-majority.

To be sure, it’s not disaffected Democrats who are driving that eyeopening data; it’s unaffiliated voters. But it’s also that same unaffiliated voting bloc that has been growing at an astonishing rate in Colorado and, by all indicators, will continue to do so.

Is Colorado’s political establishment paying attention?