Rep. Ben McAdams, Utah’s only Democrat in Congress, holds a slight lead over his Republican challenger Burgess Owens, a new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll shows.
The poll, released on Monday, has McAdams up by 4 percentage points, with 45% of likely voters in Utah’s 4th Congressional District saying they’d vote for him if the election were held now compared with 41% who said they’d vote for Owens. Another 2% said they’d vote for Libertarian candidate John Molnar, 1% said they’d go for United Utah Party candidate Jonia Broderick, and 11% weren’t sure.
The poll was conducted Sept. 7-12 by independent pollster Scott Rasmussen, who surveyed 800 likely voters within the 4th Congressional District, which houses Salt Lake City. The poll’s findings have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The Utah race is likely to be one of the nation’s most competitive House contests. With Republicans at risk of losing the Senate and possibly losing some House seats to Democrats, Owens has received the support of President Trump and other national figures as the GOP aims to take back McAdams’s seat.
McAdams won his seat after defeating Republican Rep. Mia Love by about 700 votes in 2018. McAdams, who made a name for himself in local Utah politics, is viewed as a centrist Democrat in Congress who ran his first race vowing to govern as a bipartisan lawmaker. He is also co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition, a fiscally centrist group of Democrats that’s broken away from some of the party’s leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“It’s a very close and competitive race,” Rasmussen said. “It looks like McAdams has a bit of an edge, not surprising for an incumbent, but the challenge for him or any Democrat is that we’re talking about (GOP-dominated) Utah.”
The poll found more voters also have a favorable opinion of McAdams than they do of Owens, with 52% favoring McAdams, compared with Owens’s 45%.
McAdams, however, is viewed unfavorably by more voters than his opponent, 36% to 33%.
Only 12% of voters said they weren’t sure what to think about McAdams, compared with 21% who said the same for Owens.
National polls showing Trump’s support levels behind his Democratic challenger Joe Biden may also affect how the Utah race may turn out, Rasmussen said. Trump won Utah by a less than impressive lead in 2016, with 45.5% of the vote in a state that hadn’t elected a Democrat for president since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
“There are more Republicans with qualms about the president in Utah than other places,” Rasmussen said.
Owens, a strong ally of the president who received Trump’s endorsement, may have an opportunity to gain support in the next two months if Trump’s national numbers improve by November.
The former NFL player and frequent Fox News contributor would be among a small group of black Republicans in Congress if elected. Owens advocated for economic opportunities for minorities while speaking on Trump’s record on race at the Republican National Convention last month. He is also a vocal critic of Black Lives Matter, a movement that’s gained both mass support and criticism this year following multiple incidents of police-involved shootings of black people.
Rasmussen said that feelings about national issues and the way Biden and Trump are portraying themselves in the next few months may affect the Utah race either way depending on how party leaders’ support shifts.
“It looks right now like this race is competitive,” he said. “If the national political environment shifts in one direction or the other, that will probably directly impact this race. But we just don’t know.”
