Utah voters surveyed Tuesday were doing well, thank you: Eight eight out of 10 say their financial situation is better or as good as it was four years ago.
But if Vice President Al Gore can claim credit for the good times, Utah Republicans werent listening. They swept George W. Bush to victory in Utah, giving him the states five electoral delegates.
Republican Gov. Michael Leavitt and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, also won by a landslide, reaffirming that Utah is among the countrys most Republican states.
In interviews, Utah voters often mentioned moral values as important."Hopefully, we can get someone in (the White House) with some morals and you know who that is: Bush," said Anna Backus of Orem.
While Gore was outvoted, he did manage to get two-thirds of his support in Utah from women voters. He also picked up virtually all of the Hispanic vote. But it wasnt nearly enough.
Bush drew most of the Mormon vote.
Voters might have been satisfied with the economy, but they werent giving credit to President Clinton, either. Clinton drew some of his poorest job- and personal-approval ratings in Utah — as low as 20 percent.
That's not surprising for a president who finished third in Utah in 1996, after Republican Bob Dole and interloper Ross Perot.
The survey was done by Voter News Service, a partnership of The Associated Press and the ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC television networks. The survey was conducted among 811 voters as they left 15 randomly selected polling places around Utah. The sampling margin of error for each result was plus or minus 5 percentage points for all voters, higher for subgroups. More than half of voters reported household incomes of $30,000 to $75,000 a year.
Most voters were 30 to 59 years old, but one in three was at least 60, and Gore made his best showing in Utah among the oldest voters, who gave him nearly half of their votes.