The 2016 United States presidential election in Utah was held on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election which was also held in the other 49 states and in the District of Columbia. Voters were asked to pick 6 electors to be pledged for a candidate in the Electoral College. The two main tickets of the election were the Republican one, consisting of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana Governor Mike Pence, and the Democratic one, consisting of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine.
On March 22, 2016, in the presidential primaries, Utah voters expressed their preferences for the Democratic and Republican parties' respective nominees for president. The state uses a system of semi-closed primaries, meaning that voters registered with a specific party can vote in that party's primary, while voters who are unaffiliated can vote in the primary of one party of their choosing. Trump won Utah with 45.5 percent of the vote, the lowest percentage for any Republican since George H. W. Bush in 1992 and the lowest winning percentage for any presidential candidate since both Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in 1996. Clinton received 27.5 percent of the vote, and Republican-turned-independent candidate Evan McMullin received 21.5 percent.
Trump's 18.08 point margin was the closest a Democrat has come to winning Utah since 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson won by 9.73%. Although he never lost the state, Trump never won over 60% of the vote in Utah in any of his three runs, greatly below all other 21st century Republican candidates.
This was due to McMullin's strong third-party showing limiting Trump to under 50% of the vote; Clinton received a smaller percentage of the popular vote than five other Democrats in this same time period (Barack Obama in 2008, Bill Clinton in 1996, Michael Dukakis in 1988, Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Hubert Humphrey in 1968). McMullin's 21.54% marks the last time in which a third-party candidate received more than 20% of the popular vote in a state during a presidential election.
This was one of only three states, the others being Idaho and Vermont, where the Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson did not obtain third place, as McMullin beat him in Idaho and Utah, and write-in votes for Bernie Sanders (who was no longer running for president) beat him in Vermont. Trump also became the first Republican to win the White House without carrying Salt Lake or Summit Counties since William McKinley in 1896 and 1900, respectively. The state was one of 12 (along with the District of Columbia) that shifted towards the Democrats in the 2016 election.
Caucus elections
Utah held its presidential caucuses on March 22, 2016.
Democratic caucus
Four candidates appeared on the Democratic presidential caucus ballot:
- Hillary Clinton
- Bernie Sanders
- Martin O'Malley (withdrawn)
Republican caucus
Three candidates appeared on the Republican presidential caucus ballot:
- Ted Cruz
- John Kasich
- Donald Trump
General election
Voting history
The state of Utah has given its electoral votes to the Republican ticket in every election year since 1968 and only once voted for a Democratic candidate in elections since 1952 (in 1964). The state has a majority of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) population, which on the national level voted 78 percent to 21 percent for Mitt Romney in 2012. This very heavily contributed to Mitt Romney winning the state by a margin of 73 percent to 25 percent in the 2012 election. However, Donald Trump's criticism of Romney's faith on the campaign trail in 2016 angered many Republican voters. Polls suggested that Utah might be a strong state for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson as a protest vote against Trump. As a result, Larry Sabato's online election forecaster, Sabato's Crystal Ball, downgraded their rating of the Utah contest from "Safe Republican" to "Likely Republican" on June 23.
Evan McMullin, a conservative independent candidate, had also been viewed by voters in Utah as another alternative, given that it is also his home state. According to one poll released on October 12, Trump and Clinton were seen as virtually tied in Utah at 26%, with McMullin polling at 22%. McMullin's rise was the result of further Republican backlash against Trump following the release of a controversial video from 2005 showing Trump bragging about obscene sexual conduct with women. In a poll conducted by Emerson College from October 17–19 with a sample size of 700 people, McMullin placed first with 31 percent ahead of Trump by a 4 percent margin, who had 27 percent of support, while Clinton polled in third at 24 percent. This was the first conducted statewide opinion poll of the 2016 election where a third-party candidate has placed first.
Although Evan McMullin did not win a majority or a plurality of the vote in any county in Utah, he did win a plurality or a majority of the vote in several election precincts. Six election precincts in Utah cast a simple majority of their votes for Evan McMullin with four being in Utah County while one precinct in Cache County and Salt Lake County cast a simple majority of the vote for McMullin.
Polling
Donald Trump won almost every poll, except for one poll showing him tied with Hillary Clinton and Evan McMullin, and another showing McMullin with 31% of the vote, ahead of Trump's 27% and Clinton's 24%. The final RCP average showed Trump with 37% to Clinton's 27%, Evan McMullin's 25% and Gary Johnson with 3.5%.
Candidates on the ballot
The following candidates were listed on the ballot:
- Donald Trump & Mike Pence (Republican Party)
- Evan McMullin & Nathan Johnson (Not affiliated with any Party)
- Hillary Clinton & Tim Kaine (Democratic Party)
- Gary Johnson & William Weld (Libertarian Party)
- Darrell Castle & Scott N. Bradley (Constitution Party)
- Jill Stein & Ajamu Baraka (Green Party)
- Rocky De La Fuente & Michael Steinberg (Reform Party)
- Rocky Giordani & Farley Anderson (Independent American Party)
- Alyson Kennedy & Osborne Hart (Socialist Workers Party)
- Monica Moorehead & Lamont Lilly (Workers World Party)
Candidates not on the ballot
The following were certified by the state as "write-in candidates", which means that votes given to these persons would be counted:
- Stephen Paul Parks
- Mike Smith & Daniel White
- Laurence Kotlikoff & Edward Leamer
- Tom Hoefling & Steve Schulin
- David Limbaugh & Bo Gingrich
- Dustin Baird & Brandon Russell
- Andrew D. Basiago & Karen D. Kinnison
- Emidio Soltysik & Angela Nicole Walker
- Tony Valdivia & Aaron Roy Barriere
- Cherunda Fox & Roger Kushner
- Sheila "Samm" Tittle & R. Charles Casper-Kacprowicz
- Robert L. Buchanan & Jason A. Washington
- Marshall Schoenke & James Creighton Mitchell Jr.
- Janet Reid & John E. Reid
- Jamin Burton & Victor Neves
Results
Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic
- Salt Lake (largest city: Salt Lake City)
- Summit (largest city: Park City)
By congressional district
Trump won all four congressional districts.
Analysis
Utah had the largest swing to the left of any state in 2016, due to being one of the most highly educated states in the country and its majority-Mormon population being strongly negatively disposed to voting for Trump. Some of the largest leftward shifts in the country occurred in highly educated Salt Lake City metropolitan area counties (see the map), though most of them still voted for Trump by diminished margins. Although Trump won Utah in all three of his elections, he never won over 60% of the vote in any of them, greatly below those of prior Republican nominees.
Utah gave the Republican nominee a 45 percent plurality and thus awarded him six electoral votes. This was the lowest percent of the vote Trump received in any state that he won in 2016. Trump received a much lower percentage of the vote in Utah than did Mitt Romney in 2012. In particular, Trump underperformed Romney by over 30 percentage points in the Provo-Orem, Logan, and Ogden metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, Clinton improved on Obama's performance in all of these areas. Trump received only 45 percent of the vote among Utah members of the LDS Church, barely half the proportion that Romney won in 2012. This was also much lower than the 61 percent of the LDS Church's vote Trump received nationally.
McMullin's 21.3 percent of the vote is the strongest third-party performance in any state since Ross Perot during the 1992 presidential election. He finished second ahead of Clinton in fifteen of Utah's twenty-nine counties, becoming the first third-party candidate since Perot to outpoll a major party candidate in any county nationwide, and only the fifth since 1928 to do so in any non-Southern county. In Utah County, he received almost thirty percent of the vote, about twice as much as Clinton and more than any non-Republican presidential candidate since 1968. Had McMullin won Utah, he would have become the first nationally nonpartisan candidate since George Washington to win a state in 224 years since Washington's reelection in 1792, and ultimately the first nonpartisan candidate to win a state west of the Mississippi River. Due to McMullin's strong showing, Trump's margin of victory in Utah marked a leftward swing by 29.85%, the strongest such swing in 2016.
As of the 2024 election, this is the most recent election where Grand County voted Republican.