Tonight's presidential debate in St. Louis will be broadcast live at 7 p.m. MDT on Channels 2, 4, 5, 7, CNN and MSNBC. It will be shown at 9 p.m. on Channel 13.
GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush is the clear favorite of Utahns, a new Deseret News/KSL-TV poll shows.
Bush leads Democratic Vice President Al Gore 59 percent to 27 percent in a survey conducted for the newspaper and TV station by Dan Jones & Associates last week.
Utah has always been considered Bush country, and the Texas governor and national GOP strategists have never worried about where the state's five Electoral College votes would go. Utah has not voted for the Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory in 1964.
But even though Utahns overwhelmingly support Bush, they don't give him great marks in his recent debates with Gore.
Jones found that 73 percent of Utahns had watched all or parts of the two presidential debates that took place before and during the time Jones was polling across the state.
And among those who said they had seen some of the debates, 35 percent believed Bush did a better job, 29 percent thought Gore did. Twenty-eight percent didn't see either man as the debate winner.
Bush has made one brief stop in Utah this campaign season — a visit to the Provo airport where bad weather forced the Republican loyalists on hand into an airplane hangar.
Despite Bush's friendship with GOP Gov. Mike Leavitt, it's unlikely he'll be back in Utah before the Nov. 7 election.
Bush and Gore are locked into one of the tightest presidential races in 40 years. Both men are spending their time and money in so-called battleground states — Ohio, Michigan, Florida, California and others that will ultimately determine the winner.
The vice president, a strong supporter of President Clinton's creation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and other environmental actions, has never been popular here.
Gore has not visited Utah recently and won't be here before the election.
Still, a number of Democratic candidates in the state have tried to get Gore's vice presidential running mate, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., to visit. But so far no commitment from the Gore/Lieberman campaign on that, either.
Across the country, pollsters are seeing an odd situation: Most women are voting for Gore, most men for Bush. Such gender favoritism is usually not seen in presidential elections.
Jones found the same gender phenomena in Utah — but to a lesser extent.
Men favor Bush 63 percent to 22 percent. Women favor Bush 55 percent to 31 percent. So Gore does get more of the female vote but not enough to make an overall difference, Jones found.
The race in Utah is clearly partisan.
Jones found that 92 percent of those who said they are Republicans favor Bush. Only 1 percent of Republicans said they'd vote for Gore.
Likewise, 78 percent of Democrats said they're voting for Gore. Only 9 percent said they'd vote for Bush.
And Bush gets 43 percent of the independent vote to Gore's 26 percent.
Considering that Utah is about 40 percent Republican, 20 percent Democrat and the rest independents or favoring minority parties, Bush's lead among Republicans and independents sinks any chance that Gore could win here.
The real question for Utah Democrats is whether Gore will drag down the rest of the Democratic ticket.
For example, in the 2nd Congressional District where Democrat Jim Matheson is leading Republican Derek Smith by 10 percentage points, Gore trails Bush 53 percent to 34 percent. That means for Matheson to win on Election Day, some voters will have to check the GOP presidential nominee and then cross the ballot and pick Matheson.
Jones said he's found "not a great deal of interest" in the election so far.
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com