Conservation is top of mind for more than 75% of voters in Western states, survey shows

More than three-quarters of voters across eight Western states say issues related to conservation are important in deciding whether or not to support an elected official.

That’s one of the findings of the 2026 version of the Conservation in the West poll. The survey, which includes Arizona, also finds voters here see funding cuts to public lands as a serious problem and are concerned about fewer wildland firefighters and park rangers.

More than 90% of Arizona respondents also said inadequate water supplies are a serious problem — that’s the highest percentage among the Western states surveyed.

Lori Weigel is principal at the opinion research firm New Bridge Strategy, which conducted the poll. The Show talked to her about whether she saw any overarching trends that stand out to her in the data.

Full conversation

LORI WEIGEL: I think there’s one thing that we see is that the interior West, these eight Western states including Arizona, have really demonstrated a strong conservation ethic throughout. They care about public lands, they care about conserving water. Voters in these states are really telling us that these are important issues to them in evaluating candidates. And if anything, we’ve seen in the last year an increased concern about some of the changes that have been happening in terms of funding cuts, in terms of roll back of certain laws. So if anything, that this conservation concern has become more acute in the last few years.

MARK BRODIE: Did respondents say that they take those concerns with them to the polling place, like do they really pick candidates based on some of those concerns? Because to your point, there have been funding cuts, there have been sort of policy changes that folks don’t necessarily like. I wonder if if this is something that people really think about when they’re voting.

LORI WEIGEL: Yeah, we actually asked a question, one that we’ve asked in the past, asking them to compare these issues — involving public lands, water, wildlife— and contrast that with other issues — sort of the perennial ones like the economy, health care, and education — and ask them how important are these issues related to conservation? And we have by far most voters, for example 85% of voters in Arizona saying they’re at least somewhat important. It’s about one in three that say they are very important, they are a primary factor in how I evaluate someone.

And that that level of importance has been relatively stable over recent years, but it’s shown a big increase since 2016, up 10 points overall in the region since 2016. So we know they’re considering it. I think we’ll have a real test this fall in terms of the the midterm elections, in terms of how much of an issue this becomes, because it has been fairly visible in a way that we haven’t seen changes in public policy related to conservation always be in the past.

MARK BRODIE: So you mentioned water and one of the numbers that really stood out was that 93% of the respondents in Arizona said they were seriously concerned about a lack of water supply. And what was particularly interesting, besides the fact that that number was really, really high, was that the next states were New Mexico and Utah, so you really have sort of an upper and lower Colorado River basin sort of all agreeing that they’re concerned about this issue even though their states are not really able to come up with an agreement on what to do about it.

LORI WEIGEL: Yeah, Arizona in fact was the highest level of concern. We had seven in 10, in fact, saying that inadequate water supplies are a extremely or very serious problem today. So, uh, you know, very close to Utah, just a tick above New Mexico. You know, we really do see that latitude difference, so states that are up river tend to usually be less concerned. Utah’s been in sort of a unique space recently.

So I just think that you can all agree there’s a problem. What specifically to do about the problem is another issue.

MARK BRODIE: One of the other numbers that was particularly high was the percentage of people in Arizona, more than 90%, said they’re concerned about a lack of wildland firefighters. And as fire season seemingly becomes longer and longer to the point where it’s almost all year long, that seems like a pretty significant number of people who are concerned about an issue that, when we’re talking about who you vote for, doesn’t seem to be one that a lot of people talk about, a lot of candidates for example talk about on the campaign trail.

LORI WEIGEL: Yeah, I think it is. I mean one of the things that we have seen over time is a real sense that fire is, whether it was a bad fire year or not, that people are still registering this level of concern about the potential for uncontrollable wildfires that threaten homes and communities.

And now obviously we have this interesting dynamic where a lot of the government agencies that manage national public lands did experience budget cuts, whether it was the firefighters themselves or, you know, in many cases the support staff that really monitor and manage that to help reduce the risk of and fight those fires that threaten public lands and nearby communities.

You know, I mean people are just saying like this is a problem, we had 67% of Arizonans say they’re very concerned, one of the highest out of the eight interior Western states. So I think it is likely to become an issue in some elections because there are communities that are going to be catastrophically affected.

MARK BRODIE: Were there any areas where you saw a big disparity in the numbers between states? Like an issue where, you know, voters in one state were very concerned about something and people were not that concerned about it somewhere else?

LORI WEIGEL: Well, I'd say some of the energy issues, Wyoming, which has a very energy-focused economy, is often a little bit of an outlier and somewhat different than Arizona or other states in the region. They are more likely to prioritize coal mining and oil and gas development than on even on public lands than than some other states are.

But for the most part, I think really one of the most interesting questions was when we asked people, we didn’t give them categories, we just let them respond however they wanted and asked them what message they would send to their member of Congress regarding the future of our national public lands.

And I was kind of shocked at the level of information and detail. We often hear a lot of information in our world and think "Oh gosh, are people paying attention to these issues?" And in this case they really are. That idea of keeping public lands public, of protecting wildlife and their habitats, of increasing the funding that was cut, things like that — those were being volunteered with a great deal of detail behind them.

So, I think it’s one of these areas that maybe hasn’t been as top of mind in the past, but is receiving more attention today than we’ve ever seen.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have a sense as to why that might be?

LORI WEIGEL: Well, I do think that there's been, you know, there's been some proposals that have been pretty dramatic, things like selling public lands. I mean we heard for a long time there were ideas about maybe transferring them to state control and management, or, some tweaks around the edges.

Obviously in Utah, there were some rollbacks to national monuments, and then those were put back in place. So there have been, but not as dramatic as actually selling public lands to private interest. And I think that really kind of brought these issues to sharper relief.

MARK BRODIE: Lori Weigel is principal at the opinion research firm New Bridge Strategy, and you are listening to The Show.