People watch coverage of results at an election night event hosted by the Utah Republican Party in Draper, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
It’s official, Utah’s 2024 statewide election results have been certified, capping off another election year that Republicans largely dominated, but Democrats had some local races where they’ve found a competitive foothold.
The state Board of Canvassers — made up of Utah’s top election official, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, and other state elected leaders including Attorney General Sean Reyes, Treasurer Marlo Oaks, and Auditor John Dougall — met briefly at the Utah Capitol on Monday to review statewide election results that have been tallied, canvassed and certified by all of the state’s 29 counties.
The state board voted unanimously to give their stamp of approval, finalizing Utah’s election results for the presidential race, as well as results for congressional, statewide offices, and legislative races. Statewide turnout hit 85.26% — on par with what state officials were expecting, noting that 2020 was an unusual, record-breaking year that would be hard to beat.
The vote came with no debate, in a committee room where only a handful of reporters and members of the public came to observe. It marked a fittingly anticlimactic conclusion for an election year that saw no major surprises in ruby red Utah’s broad political landscape.
The state voted handily for President-elect Donald Trump, giving him 59.39% of the vote to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 37.81%. All of Utah’s Republican congressional candidates overwhelmingly beat their Democratic or third-party opponents. Utah’s statewide elected offices — governor, attorney general, auditor and treasurer — ålso continue to be dominated by Republicans.
On legislative levels, Democrats pulled off one upset in House District 30, in Salt Lake County, where Jake Fitisemanu beat Republican Fred Cox with 52.53% of the vote. But Democrats also lost House District 10 seat in Weber County, where Republican Jill Koford narrowly beat Democratic incumbent Rep. Rosemary Lesser with 50.98% of the vote.
In the end, legislative races left Democrats with a wash, and Republicans easily maintained their supermajority control. Republicans still have 23 seats in the Senate to Democrats’ six. In the House, the GOP has 61 seats to Democrats’ 14.
Did Utah shift red or blue this year?
In all, it shifted ever so slightly more red for the presidential election, but some counties saw slight shifts toward Democrats, according to Financial Times, which uses Associated Press data to depict statewide Republican or Democratic margin shifts from 2020 to 2024.
While different interpretations of election data resulted in social media speculation that Utah was shifting blue (especially early on, before more election night results were updated over the last few weeks), Matthew Burbank, political science professor at the University of Utah, said if anything, this year’s election solidified what’s generally been the “status quo” in the Beehive State.
“Status quo for Democrats is not great,” Burbank said, “and for Republicans, status quo looks pretty good, right? They have their majority. They can pretty much do what they want at the Legislature, they won the governorship handily. Their candidate won the attorney general, so there’s not a whole lot to complain about.”
However, one map, for example, raised eyebrows in Utah’s political social media circles over the past three weeks: The New York Times’ graphic with county-level presidential election results that showed “a red shift across the U.S” this election year, with little red or blue arrows depicting where shift in margins from 2020 to 2024 were either more Democratic or more Republican.
In Utah, that map (last updated Nov. 21) shows several tiny blue arrows, like in Davis County, where the margins shifted 2.7 points more Democratic than in 2020, according to the map. But there were also some red arrows, like in Summit County, showing that area shifted 4.3 points more Republican than in 2020. While other states showed more dramatic Republican shifts, that has led some on social media to question why Utah didn’t result in more of a Republican wave or if Democrats were gaining ground in certain areas. It’s important to realize, however, is that map depicted only minor shifts, and Utah overall maintained its solidly Republican status.
Dramatic shifts shouldn’t be expected in a state that’s already overwhelmingly GOP, Burbank said.
“With that particular map, what you’re seeing, obviously, is not a lot of change in Utah,” Burbank said. “One of the reasons is because Utah is already a reliably Republican state. … Particularly in most of the counties, Republicans continue to win handily. So if you’re already winning 70% of the vote in most of these counties or more, having Donald Trump on the ballot in Utah doesn’t help a whole lot.”
Republican, Democratic parties reflect on the election
The Utah Democratic Party issued a statement last week celebrating what its leaders considered to be wins.
“As election results are finalized, it is clear that Utah resisted a nationwide shift to the right,” Utah Democratic Party Chair Diane Lewis and Vice-Chair Oscar Mata said in a prepared statement. “Despite high Republican turnout and thousands of dollars spent by outside organizations to benefit Republican candidates, Democrats prevented Republicans from netting any seats in the State Legislature.”
Lewis and Mata said Utah Democrats had some “incredible victories this year, including:
- Democratic incumbent Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson’s 54.9% win over Republican Erin Rider.
- Natalie Pinkney’s narrow, 50.84% win over Republican Rachelle Morris for the Salt Lake County Council’s at-large seat, making Pinkney the first Black woman to be elected to that council.
- Sheila Srivastava’s slim 50.77% win to flip the Salt Lake County treasurer’s office into Democratic hands, beating Republican Phil Conder.
- Jake Fitisemanu flipped House District 30 for Democrats, making him and Verona Mauga (who won House District 31) the first Samoan-Americans to be elected to the Utah Legislature.
- In Summit County, Democrats won every one of their local races.
“Although this election is over, Democrats must remain engaged,” Lewis and Mata said. “The Republican Supermajority has failed to lower the cost of housing or groceries in our state. They are criminally underfunding our children’s education. They continue to threaten the lives and freedoms of women and LGBTQ+ people.”
Utah independents fell short this election. Will the movement fizzle — or grow?
Utah Republican Party Chair Rob Axson told Utah News Dispatch on Monday that the Democratic party is “going to push their spin.”
“You have to when you’re trying to find the silver lining in challenging situations,” he said. “More power to them, frankly. Like, you need to look at where you find success. I think that’s good for any political party to identify and lean into your successes and then identify and lean into places where you came up short.”
Overall, Axson said Republicans in Utah “performed very well,” though he acknowledged there were some Salt Lake County races “I really wish we would have been able to pull off.” However, he said Republicans were able to grow GOP margins in most of their “battleground” races in the Legislature. While he would have liked Republicans to pick up another legislative seat, he said the GOP has “momentum that’s definitely in our favor.”
Summit County (home to the expensive resort town Park City and ski destinations) “is always going to be a challenge,” Axson said, “when you have such a high voting population that is not originally Utahns, they bring a lot of their voting habits from where they came from, and that will be continue to be a place that we have a lot of work to do.”
Axson also pointed to the Financial Times’ chart. While earlier iterations of the map showed Utah shifting blue after election night, the state’s arrow flipped red as more results were posted. As of Monday, Utah ranked No. 11 for the most Republican state in the nation, according to that chart.
Utah Legislature elections: 1 in 4 House races have already been decided
“We still moved to the right,” Axson said. “So just like the rest of the country, Utah showed a rightward movement as it pertains to the presidential election, and we certainly are glad and excited about that.”
Just because other states’ red shifts were more dramatic doesn’t mean the Republican Party is “weak” in Utah, he said.
“Well no, it’s just we have far less room to move when we are already as conservative and Republican as we are than some other states that are, say, a battleground state,” Axson said.
Axson said no, the Utah Republican Party didn’t have a “massive grand slam” when it came to a Republican shift, but he said that isn’t how he would define victory.
“If the requirement is for us to have this massive grand slam in order to have been deemed successful, yeah we didn’t have a grand slam,” he said. “But did we win the game and get some singles and doubles? Absolutely.”
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