Donald Trump still has a slim lead over Hillary Clinton in Utah, where more than two-thirds of voters do not believe he shares their values or has the temperament to be president, a new poll shows.
Among likely Utah voters in the latest Monmouth University poll, 34 percent support the Republican presidential nominee and 28 percent support Clinton. Another 20 percent of voters back independent candidate Evan McMullin, a Utah native who is running as a conservative alternative to Trump. Nine percent of voters plan to cast their ballot for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson.
Trump’s unpopularity in Utah, a reliably red state with a large Mormon population, appears to be giving both Clinton and McMullin hope that they might be able to pull off an upset. The last time a GOP nominee carried the state by fewer than 20 percentage points was in 1993, when third-party candidate Ross Perot secured 25 percent, leaving incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush to win the state’s electoral votes by a 16-point margin over Bill Clinton.
While Trump has a 29-point edge over McMullin among self-identified Republican voters, his polling advantage has shrunk to 6 points among independents. Twenty-nine percent of independent voters back Trump, 23 percent support Clinton and 21 percent back McMullin. Meanwhile, 92 percent of self-identified Democrats plan to vote for their party’s nominee.
Trump leads McMullin by 6 points among Mormon voters, who make up about 60 percent of the Utah’s voting population, but he trails Clinton by 21 points among non-religious voters and those belonging to a different denomination. By comparison, Arizona Sen. John McCain beat then-Sen. Barack Obama by nearly 60 points among Mormon voters in Utah in the 2008 election.
Both major-party candidates continue to receive net-negative favorability ratings in the Utah, while 66 percent of voters said they did not know enough about McMullin to form an opinion. Seventy-three percent of voters said Trump does not share their values, including more than six in 10 Republicans, while 70 percent said the same of Clinton.
Aside from the presidential race, Republican Sen. Mike Lee and Gov. Gary Herbert both maintain significant leads over their Democratic challengers. Lee carries a 29-point lead over Misty Snow, while Herbert leads businessman Mike Weinholtz by 33 percentage points.
The Monmouth University poll of 403 likely Utah Voters was conducted from Oct. 10-12, just after Sunday’s presidential debate in St. Louis, Mo. Results contain a margin of error plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
