What the split in 'Trump-first' voters and 'party-first' voters says about the Utah GOP

SALT LAKE CITY — It's no secret that Republicans dominate politics and governance in Utah.

Voters haven't elected a Democrat in a statewide election since 1996 and Republicans hold nearly 76% of seats in the state Senate and 81% of the seats in the House of Representatives. With one party holding most political power in the state, the dominant political disagreements occur between different factions of Republicans, and a new poll shows how various GOP politicians are viewed by separate groups of their voters.

Conducted by Noble Predictive Insights earlier this month, the poll asks respondents not just to identify themselves by party affiliation, but it groups Republican voters into three distinct groups: "Trump-first Republicans," "party-first Republicans" and "neither type" Republicans.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority, 98%, of Trump-first Republicans hold a favorable opinion of President Donald Trump, while 72% of party-first voters hold favorable views. While political scientists note that splitting the 609 poll respondents into various groups decreases the sample size of each and can increase the amount of error in the numbers, the poll found that Trump-first and party-first Republicans make up a similar portion of the GOP electorate — 41% and 44%, respectively — while only about 14% said neither.

The poll was conducted from March 11 to 13, using a text-to-online and online opt-in survey. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9%.

Pollsters asked the same group of respondents about their views on four other Utah Republicans — Gov. Spencer Cox, Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. John Curtis and former Sen. Mitt Romney — and found that while they were all viewed favorably overall, there were significant differences in how various GOP voters view each.

"Trump-skeptical Republicans are an endangered species almost everywhere — except Utah," Noble's research chief, David Byler, said. "On one side, (Make America Great Again) politicians like Trump and Lee earn a positive favorability rating by catering to a mix of Trump fans and old-style Republicans. On the other side, there's Romney — who alienated the Trump faction but kept enough Republican stalwarts, independents and Democrats to maintain a positive image. Then there's Cox and Curtis — sitting in the middle, working with Trump but not fully embracing him."

A pair of Utah political science experts agreed that the poll shows Utah remains a relative outlier among conservative states when it comes to embrace of Trump.

"I think what this helps to get at is a little bit of the distinction, in essence, are you primarily Republican because you're supporting Donald Trump? Or are you primarily Republican because you're Republican and the president happens to be Donald Trump and you're OK with that?" said Matthew Burbank, a professor of political science at the University of Utah. "At least in Utah politics, as we've seen, that does seem to capture something that seems like a real split."

Leah Murray, the director of Weber State University's Walker Institute of Politics and Public Policy and a host of KSL NewsRadio's "Inside Sources," said the poll describes a real difference between different Utah Republicans, but said the split precedes Trump's rise in the GOP.

"Trump capitalized on what was diversity in the Republican Party, he is not the cause of it," she said, pointing out that division was evident years before Trump won the party's nomination in 2016.

Take Lee, for example, who ran against then-Sen. Bob Bennett during the tea party wave in 2010 and successfully ousted the senator by appealing to GOP delegates during the state convention. In 2014, Utah lawmakers passed SB54 which allows candidates to qualify for the ballot either by winning at convention or by collecting signatures.

Murray says she believes that has created the real divide in the GOP, and while the Trump-first and party-first labels are descriptive to a point, she thinks the factions are driven more by adherence to the caucus-convention system and preference for the option to gather signatures. And that's a difference she expects will continue in Utah well past Trump's second term.

"I think the two factions are very, I don't want to say static because I don't think humans are ever static, but the crowd of people who show up at the convention versus the crowd of people who are SB54 supporters feels like maybe a fault line in the party that doesn't get crossed," she said. "If you gathered signatures seems to be a litmus test in the convention and people who gather signatures can't win at convention. That feels like the tension point."

That seems to be borne out in the data. The candidates who have embraced the signature-gathering path tend to receive more support from the party-first respondents. Although Lee collected signatures when he ran for reelection in 2022, he has since called for SB54 to be repealed.

Here's how favorably each of the four Republicans is viewed by constituents, according to Noble Predictive Insights:

Gov. Spencer Cox

• Registered voters: 52% approve, 39% disapprove
• Republicans: 63% approve, 30% disapprove
• Trump-first Republicans: 63% approve, 28% disapprove
• Party-first Republicans: 71% approve, 23% disapprove
• Democrats: 25% approve, 61% disapprove
• Independents: 45% approve, 43% disapprove

Sen. Mike Lee

• Registered voters: 47% approve, 38% disapprove
• Republicans: 66% approve, 24% disapprove
• Trump-first Republicans: 78% approve, 10% disapprove
• Party-first Republicans: 67% approve, 19% disapprove
• Democrats: 13% approve, 63% disapprove
• Independents: 31% approve, 48% disapprove

Sen. John Curtis

• Registered voters: 48% approve, 25% disapprove
• Republicans: 62% approve, 18% disapprove
• Trump-first Republicans: 59% approve, 19% disapprove
• Party-first Republicans: 74% approve, 8% disapprove
• Democrats: 20% approve, 47% approve
• Independents: 37% approve, 27% disapprove

Former Sen. Mitt Romney

• Registered voters: 51% approve, 37% disapprove
• Republicans: 49% approve, 43% disapprove
• Trump-first Republicans: 30% approve, 64% disapprove
• Party-first Republicans: 63% approve, 28% disapprove
• Democrats: 58% approve, 28% disapprove
• Independents: 51% approve, 34% disapprove

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