About 49 percent of the state’s voters were registered as Republicans, according to the state elections office. A full 35 percent were registered to vote but unaffiliated with any party, with Democrats and other political parties making up the remainder.
And Democrats and others who argue they aren’t well represented by the state’s elected leadership argue the one-sided nature of state politics only intensifies the pushback.
A survey of voters ahead of the 2016 election by the Utah Foundation, a Salt Lake City-based think-tank, found that Utahns tended to identify as either more conservative or more liberal than in most other states, especially on the left.
“While the median Democrat nationally is ‘mostly liberal,’ Utah’s median Democrat is ‘consistently liberal,’” according to the survey report, which notes that some voters may be more centrist on the U.S. political scale but don’t identify with either party.