The Finding
Of the 14 research reports released in 2025, there were a lot of key findings. The Utah Foundation’s Board of Directors selected the top 10. In 2nd place:
“Voter turnout in Utah improved markedly with the adoption of universal mail-in voting, rising from 44th in 2014 to 13th in 2018. Utah may revert to among the lowest of states with the removal of universal mail-in voting scheduled for 2029.”
The Details
Civic engagement is an important part of social capital. In the Utah Foundation’s Social Capital Index project, voter turnout is an important measure of civic engagement.
When examining voter turnout across several cycles, there is a clear pattern: higher turnout in presidential election years and lower turnout in midterm elections (the surge-and-decline pattern in political science). This pattern holds in Utah. Presidential election years should be compared primarily to presidential years, and midterm elections to midterm elections. Notably, since the 2020 elections, the rise and fall in Utah turnout between midterm and presidential elections has been much more subdued.
From 2006 to 2016, turnout in presidential and midterm elections in Utah was generally stable. However, in 2018, voter turnout was exceptionally high. That year, turnout was 57%, up from 37% four years earlier. The 2018 midterm elections surpassed even the presidential election cycles of 2008 and 2012, due in part to high-profile ballot propositions.
Utah’s voter turnout has increased significantly since 2014. This is likely due in part to Utah’s expansion of vote-by-mail. Beginning in 2015, Utah municipalities adopted vote-by-mail elections, and a subsequent report by the Utah Foundation documented substantially higher voter turnout in these municipalities.
While the expansion of vote-by-mail elections appears to have boosted turnout, H.B. 300, passed in 2025, would roll back automatic vote-by-mail enrollment, effective in 2029. This may cause Utah to revert to pre-2016 voter turnout levels.
The Background
Read more about this finding in its full report here.
And learn more about social capital here.
And here is the full Social Capital Index series.
Coming Up
Learn about the other nine top findings from 2025 in our Significant Statistics blog posts.
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