Democrats face a daunting, at best, electoral challenge in Utah. It's a deep red state that's been a reliable Republican stronghold for decades that last voted Democrat in 1964, for Lyndon Johnson.
With only six electoral votes at stake, the Mountain West state known for its connection to Mormonism is not high on the list of Democratic pickups for 2024. But there are some reasons to look at the state with a modicum of hope as the Republican Party deals with an identity crisis and a splintering coalition in the post-Trump era.
Here’s how to take advantage of the moment while recognizing the limitations.
The challenge
Utah went to Trump in 2020 with 58.1% to Biden’s 37.6%, or 865,140 voters to 560,282. Republicans hold all seats in the state’s congressional delegation, four representatives and two senators, and dominate the state’s legislature with supermajorities in each body.
Of Utah’s 3,205,958 residents, 90.6% percent identify as white—a number that includes no small number of the 14.4% that identify as Hispanic or Latino. 2.7% are of Asian descent, 1.6% are Native American, 1.5% are Black, and 1.1% are Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.
Of 1,713,079 active voters, over half—871,023—are Republicans. Only 254,451 are Democrats, but there is a large cohort, 559,883, who are nominally unaffiliated.
It’s a tough road ahead for Democrats if they want to breach the red wall.
“I think flipping the state is going to be remarkably difficult,” Benjamin Pearce, a Utah Democrats organizer, told Blue Tent. “Joe Biden got the best performance a Dem presidential candidate has had since LBJ carried the state in 1964, and even Biden didn’t break 40%. Our congressional districts are horribly gerrymandered: Even with 30% of the state voting for the Dem gubernatorial candidate, proportionally, there should be a Democrat in Congress, but the bluest district in the state went to Trump by nine.”
That’s not, however, to say that there’s no point in trying. Pearce noted that while it’s an uphill battle, Democrats are making inroads in local and municipal elections around the state—school boards and the like—and that those efforts could pay off down the line in state and even federal elections. There are openings in the suburbs, and even in some counties that tilted toward third-party candidate Evan McMullin in 2016. Nonetheless, the state legislature remains in the grip of the GOP.
“This state is heading the right direction, albeit slightly, but there are a lot of institutional barriers to even gaining ground in the state legislature, making it hard to gain any kind of momentum in this process,” Pearce said.
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Utah presidential election
What party leaders say
Joshua Rush, communications director for the Utah Democrats, had a more upbeat analysis. Describing the party’s Utah infrastructure as “strong,” Rush said Democrats in the state are focused on ensuring there’s not abuse of the redistricting process, expanding the party in growth areas like the suburbs, and fighting for Democrats in every local and state race in the 2021 races.
Rush urged progressives to take a more nuanced look at the state of play in Utah, especially when it comes to party registration. Statistics and numbers from Utah can be misleading, he said, because many Democrats switched their registration to Republican in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get John Huntsman to win the GOP primary for governor, and haven’t switched back yet.
“Our state isn’t a ‘deep red’ one in the traditional sense,” said Rush. “There’s a strong culture of moderate Republicans who are possible for us to win over to our side, but factors like culture, strong family ties, and lack of understanding of our platform put roadblocks in our way.”
In 2018, Ben McAdams, a Democrat, won Utah’s Second Congressional District—narrowly defeating Republican Mia Love. McAdams lost his re-election bid to Burgess Owens, but the midterm victory in the Salt Lake City district shows that there’s opportunity on the horizon.
“We’ve got a huge and big-tent Democratic Party here, and with help from national organizations and campaign funds, we’re even stronger,” Rush added. “Building for 2021, we’re super-focused on flipping municipal seats in Salt Lake County.”
Part of any effort to flip the state will have to rely on get-out-the-vote strategies—door knocking, canvassing, and the like—and that presents its own challenges in Utah, where the pandemic led to the state Democratic Party foregoing traditional voter activation strategies. That decision, said Pearce, was one that ultimately damaged the party’s chances to move the needle on state races.
“To the extent there is a campaign culture in Utah, it is very door-knocking-heavy, and with the pandemic, a lot of statehouse campaigns elected to do literature drops instead of phone banks because volunteers preferred to do that,” Pearce said. “That is not to speak negatively on any volunteers who have very valid preferences on how they volunteer, but it is objectively a much, much less effective way of reaching voters.”
What activists say
Progressive Utah activists have made strides in the state, especially around LGBTQ issues, said Rush.
“We’ve ended conversion therapy, killed anti-trans bill after anti-trans bill this year, and much of that great work is due to outside nonprofits like Equality Utah that do great work turning Republicans into allies to LGBTQ folks,” Rush said.
Electorally, however, it’s a different story—groups have to decide what’s worth fighting for. Gregg Schultz, one of the leaders of Salt Lake Indivisible (SLI), told Blue Tent that his group is looking at the state with measured expectations. Gerrymandering at the state level has made the battle for political power in Utah—already a tough contest—even tougher.
“It’s like fighting with a brick wall,” said Schultz. “It’s very hard.”
For SLI, the effort to make change starts with acknowledging political reality and urging supporters to use whatever means are at their disposal to moderate Utah’s right-wing politics. Many times, in practice, this means members of the group, which was nonpartisan until 2020, advocate for candidates in Republican primaries that are less far to the right.
It’s tactics, said Schultz.
“To me, that’s just as effective as flipping a seat, really, because you’re moving someone to the left,” Schultz said. “If you want to be realistic, focus on that.”
Pearce offered a reasonably positive prognostication on the state of progressive infrastructure in Utah. While the Democratic Party has more money now than it has in a decade, he said, their efforts are likely to focus on down-ballot races for now. Activist groups, however, are popping up with more frequency.
“It certainly seems like a lot of radical/progressive organizations are reaching more prominence and/or having more impact than before,” Pearce said.
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Utah voter demographics
The path to victory
What “victory” looks like for progressives and Democrats in Utah is very different than in states like Texas, North Carolina and Ohio, where Republicans lack the same kind of iron grip over the political landscape. Utah is unlikely to become even a swing state in the near future.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t options for electoral success available to the left in the rapidly urbanizing Western state. Down-ballot races offer opportunities for Democrats hoping to move things to the left slowly but steadily. Absorbing the blows of the coming redistricting will be tough—the “brick wall” Schultz mentioned—but not impossible.
Democrats intend to focus on their unique place in Utah politics, walking a fine line between the state’s conservative values and attempting to peel off wavering Republicans from the right. It’s a process. But it’s one that Rush feels confident will eventually work.
“I feel very confident that Utah will eventually go blue, but it’s incumbent on us, our organizational strength, and our organizing strength to get stronger to make it happen,” Rush said.
