Chris Karpowitz is associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University, as well as Co-Director of its Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. He is coauthor of the award-winning book The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions. Kelly Patterson is professor of political science at Brigham Young and associate dean of social sciences. He is the author of Political Parties and the Maintenance of Liberal Democracy.
Utah has gone Republican in each of the last twelve presidential elections, often giving the GOP nominee 60%-plus of the vote. Yet this year most classify it only as “Lean Republican.” What’s going on? Utah finds itself in an unexpected and unfamiliar role this year: a competitive state in the presidential race. The state is typically completely ignored by presidential campaigns because the outcome is usually a foregone conclusion. Mitt Romney won nearly three-quarters of the state’s votes in 2012, for example. This year’s dynamics are very different and can be traced directly to the identity of the Republican nominee, Donald Trump. Utah’s Republican voters soundly rejected Trump during the primary
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