This year’s “Your City, Your Choice” survey
amplifies the voices of Portlanders
in every neighborhood and community.
1,252 participants // Three years of data // Four Portland Districts // Your City, Your Choice 2026
In 2024 the City of Portland enacted major reforms to our city’s government and elections. The reforms sought to deliver a more representative and accessible city government that was capable of delivering more effective and equitable public services in every Portland neighborhood.
Since 2024, North Star Civic Foundation and Oregon Values and Beliefs Center have partnered to ask Portlanders to share their experiences about how local governments work, if they feel represented by local leaders, and which policies and services are priorities.
Latest Updates
Our volunteer research team will continue to analyze the data and share findings on Stumptown Stats, our civic data dashboard. When others use this data to find useful insights, we will share them there.
Key findings:
People love Portland as a place to live, and they love their neighborhoods even more.The most satisfying aspects of living in Portland are parks and outdoor areas, shopping and restaurants, and arts and culture.
When it comes to doing what is right for Portland, Portlanders place their trust in community leaders more than in government leaders.
22% of Portlanders consider Portland’s government ‘effective’ (more than 1 in 5), up from 13% (~ 1 in 8) in 2024;
Portlanders across racial identities are more likely to feel represented by Portland City Council in 2026 than in 2024, (though slightly worse than in 2025).
Portlanders have real concerns – especially when it comes to the kind of kitchen table topics that can erode trust in governments: High cost of living, stagnant job growth, limited business opportunity, and too many people sleeping on our streets.
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The Full Report
In partnership with Oregon Values and Beliefs Center, we present this summary of the top-level findings, as well as some analysis of the most interesting results broken down by demographics, geography, and comparative responses.
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Outreach Tools
The community helped us to create this resource, and the community deserve to see the results. Our online toolkit contains emails, social media, and printable resources to support outreach and sharing the findings of our survey.
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Rose City Reform
We invite all candidates and elected officials to speak out about the results of this survey. Our friends at Rose City Reform have a candidate tracker to know who is running to represent you in the 2026 election.
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Register to Vote
Feeling fired up about Portland’s future? It’s an election year, and positions from local to national are up for voter decision.
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Oregon Center for Voting and Elections
Recent reforms mean that local voters will use ranked-choice voting in both City of Portland and Multnomah County elections for the first time this year. Portland uses multi-winner elections for City Council races. Need a refresher?
Oregon Center for Voting and Elections has you covered.
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Media Inquiry
Reporters and other media professionals wishing to use this data, who would like to speak with the researchers, or the team behind the survey, are invited to email shawn@northstarcivic.org
A sneak peek at what Portlanders are saying:
