…Candidates chosen by the delegates have historically underperformed in Republican primary elections — gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman and Senate candidate Trent Staggs are recent examples who lost their primary after winning at convention — and a new survey released by the Utah Foundation Wednesday found that the median Republican delegate is more conservative than the median GOP voter.
“In terms of issue priorities, Republican delegates place less importance on a few items like housing, roads and air quality, crime than Republican voters do,” Shawn Teigen, the foundation’s president, told reporters.
While delegates and voters were aligned on several issues when polled, delegates were more likely to support developing oil and gas extraction on Utah lands, more likely to oppose raising the minimum wage and more opposed to adding requirements for employers to offer paid parental leave.
The report also found that delegates from both the GOP and Democratic Party are slightly more pessimistic about the quality of life in Utah than their party counterparts.
“Both of our measures of kind of where the state is headed and how we’re feeling now, delegates are feeling a little bit more negative than voters are,” Teigen said…
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