Tied in Utah

Poll: Trump tied with Clinton in Utah

By Louis Nelson

Amid flagging support nationally from Republicans, a poll conducted earlier this week puts Donald Trump in a virtual three-way tie in one of the country’s deepest red states: Utah.

The poll, first reported by the Deseret News and conducted by Salt Lake City-based Y2 Analytics, puts both Trump and Hillary Clinton at 26 percent with likely voters in Utah, just 2 percentage points ahead of independent conservative candidate Evan McMullin. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson polled at 14 percent.

While Trump has largely managed to shore up support among traditional GOP constituencies, he has struggled mightily to earn the trust of Mormons, a reliably-Republican group that makes up a relatively large percentage of Utahans. Their skepticism of Trump, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) explained, is rooted at least in part in Donald Trump’s past proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

“We can go through the fact that he’s made statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerant,” Lee said in an interview last June when he was asked why he had not yet endorsed Trump. “We can get into the fact that he’s wildly unpopular in my state, in part because my state consists of people who are members of a religious minority church. A people who were ordered exterminated by the governor of Missouri in 1838. And, statements like that make them nervous.”

The Manhattan billionaire has admitted that he is “having a tremendous problem in Utah,” a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. That problem appears to have gotten worse for Trump of late, with Mormon lawmakers both inside the state and elsewhere withdrawing their support for the GOP nominee over incredibly vulgar remarks he made about women in 2005 that were published last week by The Washington Post.

In the wake of those comments, which included Trump bragging that his celebrity status allowed him to “grab [women] by the pussy” with impunity, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert urged the GOP nominee to drop off the Republican ticket. Utahan Reps. Mia Love, Chris Stewart and Jason Chaffetz also withdrew their support for their party’s nominee.

The Salt Lake City Tribune on Wednesday endorsed Clinton, stating that the Democratic nominee isn't perfect but is the only candidate qualified to be president. The Deseret News, which is owned by the Mormon Church, also previously called on Trump to resign from the presidential race.

And former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, also a Mormon, has consistently blasted Trump for being wildly unsuited for the presidency.

The Y2 Analytics poll was conducted from Oct. 10-11, surveying 500 likely Utahan voters with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.4 points.