Utah

Utah had no race for Senate or governor, so its U.S. House vote, all districts added together, is the statewide measure. Republican candidates won it by 0.2 points. In 2024 they won it by 30.3. The election was held on court-ordered boundaries that followed an anti-gerrymandering lawsuit, and one of the four districts elected a Democrat.¹ Ben McAdams won that seat by 43.9 points; the delegation had been entirely Republican. Republicans won the other three: Blake D. Moore by 7.4 points, Mike Kennedy by 14.5 and Celeste Maloy by 21.0. The Associated Press called the Second and Fourth districts on November 5, two days after the election, the Fourth last.²

Against the 2024 presidential vote, which Donald Trump won here by 21.6 points, the House vote moved 21.4 points toward the Democrats. Both parties drew fewer votes than their presidential candidates had, Republicans far fewer: Democratic House candidates drew 85 votes for every 100 Kamala Harris won in Utah, and Republican candidates 55 for every 100 of Trump’s. Turnout in the House races was 97% of 2022’s and 69% of the 2024 presidential vote.

The move was close to uniform: every region shifted between 17.9 and 23.5 points. The Salt Lake City metro area, which casts 37% of the vote, went from D+7.0 to D+26.9. The Provo metro area, with 20%, stayed Republican at R+19.9, about half its 2024 margin of R+40.8. The Ogden metro area came closest to changing sides, from R+25.3 to R+3.6. The small towns and rural counties moved least and still moved 17.9 points, to R+28.9.

Weber County, in the Ogden area, was the only county to change sides. Trump carried it by 23.6 points and Democratic House candidates carried it by 1.6. Salt Lake County, which casts more votes than any other, went from D+10.2 to D+29.6. Utah County, in the Provo area, stayed Republican by 19.1, down from 40.1, and Davis County, in the Ogden area, by 5.6, down from 25.0. No county moved toward the Republicans.

Republicans kept majorities in both chambers of the Legislature and two-thirds of the Senate.^{1, 3} In the House they lost the two-thirds majority they had held for about three decades, the Deseret News reported; the Salt Lake Tribune dates the party’s veto-proof hold on both chambers to 1998.^{4, 5, 6} On provisional counts they fell from 61 of 75 seats to 45, with 28 Democrats and two unaffiliated members.³ A veto override takes two-thirds of the members elected to each house, which is 50 in the House.⁷ Placing a constitutional amendment on the ballot takes the same two-thirds, by Ballotpedia’s account, so House Republicans can no longer do either without votes from outside their caucus.⁸

The Senate majority leader, Kirk Cullimore, lost his seat to Democrat Shana Anderson, and Senate Republicans chose Sen. Evan Vickers as Senate president. House Speaker Mike Schultz, re-elected by his caucus, said the majority will focus on education funding, data center transparency and the Great Salt Lake.^{4, 5} Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said state leaders need to change how they deal with constituents, citing redistricting, a since-repealed ban on public-sector collective bargaining and attempts to restrict citizen ballot measures. In prepared remarks on November 9 he said: “I want to spend more time listening to Utahns.”⁴

The constitution gives the Legislature the job of dividing the state into congressional and legislative districts, no later than the general session after it receives each census.⁹ This year’s congressional map came from a court order instead.¹ Elections belong to the Office of the Lieutenant Governor under state law. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson holds that office, which carries a four-year term.^{10, 11}

Both statewide questions were constitutional amendments, which are adopted if a majority of those voting on them approve.¹² Amendment B, which would have required citizen initiatives that affect taxes to pass with 60 percent of the vote, drew 38.7% in favor and failed; the Associated Press called it on election night, KUER reported. Amendment A, which removes the requirement that proposed constitutional amendments be published in newspapers before an election, drew 61.1% and passed, a result called two days later.¹³

Associate Chief Justice Jill Pohlman, the highest-ranking member of the Utah Supreme Court since the chief justice resigned earlier in the year, was on track to be retained with more than three-quarters of the vote after some Republicans urged voters to remove her, KSL reported in the Deseret News.² In Salt Lake County, the Democratic district attorney, Sim Gill, claimed victory for another term; he had 66.3 percent to Republican Kent Davis’s 33.7 percent in unofficial returns the morning after the election, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.¹⁴

On the 15-member State Board of Education, election-night returns showed three seats moving to Democrats, which would give them five, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. KUER reported two days later that Democrats had flipped seats on the board and on the Salt Lake County Council, and that two unaffiliated candidates, Patrick Belmont and Sergio Sotelo, had been declared winners of House seats over Republican opponents.^{15, 16}

Republicans won again in the three U.S. House seats in our count that they held. The closest was Blake D. Moore’s, by 7.4 points in a district Trump carried by 29.1. They kept majorities in both chambers and two-thirds of the Senate, and the three Republican U.S. House incumbents won, Utah News Dispatch reported.^{1, 3} The governor’s office was not on the ballot. In the House vote 25 of 29 counties voted Republican, and the Provo and St. George metro areas did so by 19.9 and 31.7 points.

The Senate seat held by Republican Mike Lee will be on the ballot in 2028, in a state that voted R+21.6 for president in 2024 and R+0.2 in this year’s House vote. The governor’s office will be too. Statewide executive officers serve four-year terms, and Cox, who has about two years left, has said he will not run again in 2028, the Salt Lake Tribune wrote.^{11, 17} The constitution has the Legislature redraw congressional and legislative districts after each census.⁹

The legislative counts are provisional and the canvass is pending. Our Senate count of 21 Republicans and 8 Democrats includes District 11, where Republican Brooks Benson led the Forward Party incumbent, Sen. Emily Buss, by 512 votes on November 9. Three House districts had margins of a few hundred votes.^{1, 3}