A plurality of Utahns approve of the job Sen. Mike Lee is doing, but Republicans in the state are particularly happy with Lee’s performance.
Overall, 47% of Utah voters say they approve of Lee’s performance, while 44% say they disapprove and 10% say they don’t know, according to the latest Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll.
Among Utah voters who consider themselves conservative or very conservative, Lee gets high marks, with 80% of very conservative voters saying they approve of his job performance and 68% of conservative voters saying the same.
But, on the flip side, Democrats in Utah are almost totally united in their disapproval, with 92% saying they either somewhat or strongly disapprove of Lee’s performance in office.
A few months into his third term, Lee is known as one of the more conservative lawmakers in the upper chamber. On its scorecard, Heritage Action for America, a conservative advocacy group, gives Lee a lifetime rating of 96% when assessing “how conservative members of Congress are.” And according to the polling website FiveThirtyEight, Lee votes with President Joe Biden only 18% of the time, one of the lowest percentages even among Republicans.
Recently, Lee has challenged Biden on issues like the U.S. continuing to require foreign visitors to have received the COVID-19 vaccine, and student loan forgiveness. He’s also joined with other conservatives in Congress, including the House Freedom Caucus, in demanding structural changes to the nation’s spending in exchange for an increase in the nation’s debt limit.
Lee faced independent candidate Evan McMullin in the 2022 midterm elections, after Democrats supported the formerly Republican McMullin over nominating someone from their own party. Lee ended up beating McMullin by over 10 percentage points in the general election.
Dan Jones & Associates conducted the poll of 801 registered Utah voters from March 14-22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points.