Voters in Utah remain almost evenly split on which presidential candidate they will support in November a new poll finds, a surprising result since voters there have supported every Republican nominee since 1968, often by huge margins.
A new survey from Y2 Analytics finds President Trump leading Joe Biden by 3 points, at 44% support, with 8% of voters saying they would vote for a third-party candidate if the election were held today. Five percent of Beehive State voters said they hadn’t made up their mind between Trump and Biden, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and a former two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator.
Trump’s support in the state has dropped 2% since the firm conducted a survey in April, which had Trump at 46% support and Biden at 41%. Much of Trump’s drop in support can be attributed to the president’s poor performance with independent and self-described moderate voters. According to Y2 Analytics, those voters back Trump by double-digits.
Y2 Analytics interviewed 1,099 likely Utah voters from May 9-15, and the poll has a margin of error of 3%.
In 2016, Trump won the state with 45.54% of the vote, largely due to independent conservative candidate Evan McMullin, who earned 21.54% of the vote in his home state. In the state with a large number of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Trump’s anti-immigration views and vulgarian personal habits have not played well with broad swaths of Republicans, who have at times given their party’s nominees more than 70% of the vote.
In fall 2016, Y2 Analytics conducted a survey a month before the election and found Trump tied with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at 26% support. Clinton placed a distant second on Election Day with 27.46% of the vote.
The findings of the latest Y2 Analytics poll are consistent with a KUTV survey conducted earlier this month that had Trump leading by 3 points. An April poll by Deseret News had Trump leading by 19 points over Biden.
