President Trump has a narrow lead on presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the ruby red state of Utah ahead of November’s general election.
Trump earns 46% support among likely Utah voters, compared to Biden, who attracts 41%, according to a UtahPolicy.com and KUTV 2News poll conducted last month by Y2 Analytics.
The survey’s researchers also found 5% of respondents would vote for a third-party candidate and 2% would cast a ballot for another contender, while 5% remained undecided.
Trump’s 5 percentage point advantage on the former vice president should put his reelection campaign on notice. Although he won Utah in 2016 with 45.5% of the vote, then-rival Hillary Clinton only generated 27.5% support. Monday’s poll suggests Biden’s edge in the state is driven by independents who favor Delaware’s 36-year senator over the White House incumbent 39% to 32%.
[Read more: Trump campaign relentlessly asking voters to ‘wonder’ about Biden’s mental fitness]
Trump’s share of the vote in Utah has stayed steady during the novel coronavirus pandemic, recording 46% support and a job approval rating for the first time above 50% in February.
Poll results such as these reflect Biden’s lead on Trump in RealClearPolitics’s average of national surveys, where former President Barack Obama’s No. 2 is ahead by 5.9 percentage points.
Monday’s research was fielded among 1,331 likely Utah voters from March 21-30, 2020. Its findings have a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
No Democratic nominee has won Utah since President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. The Latter-day Saints church-dominated state has given Republican nominees some of their highest winning percentages in recent decades. In 2004, President George W. Bush in his reelection win nabbed 72%, and in 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney (elected in 2018 as a senator from Utah) nabbed 73%, while Democratic President Barack Obama, with Joe Biden as his vice president, won 25%.
