Not all the votes have been counted yet, but Sen. Mike Lee has been reelected to the United States Senate. Both candidates have acknowledged the incumbent’s victory. As of this writing, his current margin is 14 percentage points, a result that will likely fluctuate some as counties complete their tallies in coming days.

Though the partisan outcome is the same as every Senate election in Utah since 1974, the Mike Lee-Evan McMullin race will go into the history books as one of the more remarkable statewide elections in the state’s recent political history.

It is noteworthy, for one, because Democrats made the highly unusual choice to refrain from nominating their own candidate, endorsing instead the independent candidacy of a self-described lifelong conservative. Party leaders hardly had much to lose, as they have failed to field competitive candidates in Senate races for most of the past three decades. 

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During his 2016 election, for example, Lee cruised to a 40-pecentage points victory over his Democratic opponent, Misty Snow. Since 1980, the average Republican margin of victory is well over 30 percentage points. The two exceptions are the 16-percentage-point Republican victories in Robert Bennett’s 1992 race against Wayne Owens and Orrin Hatch’s 1982 run against Ted Wilson.

Whatever the final tally is, Lee will not reach such a margin this time around, and he is running well behind the Republican margin in each of the state’s four congressional districts. Moral victories may be cold comfort for McMullin voters, but even in a losing cause, his campaign appears to have delivered the most competitive Senate election Utah has seen in more than four decades.

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Some of this competitiveness has to do with the candidates’ differing approaches to building a winning coalition. While Lee worked primarily to mobilize his conservative base, McMullin attempted to form a broader, more centrist coalition of voters. And his argument about what it means to show fidelity to the Constitution pushed back hard against Lee’s reputation as the Constitution-carrying member of Congress.

McMullin’s candidacy directly confronted Lee’s brand of conservatism, including his willingness to cozy up to former President Donald Trump. In response, Lee can rightly argue that his focus on the conservative base still outpaced McMullin’s attempt at broader coalition building, especially in rural parts of the state. Still, this year’s tighter margin prompts questions about the limits and vulnerabilities of a base-centric approach, particularly as Utah and the nation wrestle with the ongoing Trumpiness of the Republican Party.

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The power of party structure

Beyond candidate strategy, the competitiveness of McMullin’s independent campaign also highlights some larger structural issues at work in today’s politics. For one, it shows the enormous burden the national party’s brand is for Democratic candidates in Utah elections. In Senate races, politicians with the Democratic label have not come within 20 points of their Republican opponents in 30 years, and when Democrats do field slightly more competitive candidates, as in the cases of Owens and Wilson, they are individuals with very high name recognition and long histories of electoral success.

Political scientists have recently highlighted the growing “nationalization” of American politics in which state and local issues and interests are overwhelmed by national party brands and attention to the balance of power in Washington. Lee’s campaign relied on this nationalization in two ways: first, perhaps his strongest argument was that Utah Republicans should care about control of the Senate and that only the Republican candidate could guarantee that outcome.

Second, Lee also benefited (as did McMullin) from a tsunami of spending from outside interest groups who have little interest in Utah and who involved themselves because they care about which party is ascendant in national politics. This spending often included over-the-top and distorted claims about the interests and records of the two candidates and precious little attention to distinct Utah concerns, let alone the “Utah way” of engaging differences of opinion.

Independent senate candidate Evan McMullin talks to supporters during an election night watch party at the Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center in Taylorsville on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. McMullin is running against incumbent Republican Sen. Mike Lee. | Spenser Heaps, Deseret News

Of course, McMullin’s candidacy also faced other stiff structural headwinds that would have been difficult for any candidate to overcome. It is a midterm election year in which the first-term president is not especially popular and the country is dealing with unusually high levels of inflation. These two facts alone were going to work against any candidate not running as a Republican. Add to that the high level of attachment to the Republican label among Utah voters, and McMullin’s competitiveness is all the more remarkable.

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Utah will send a Republican to Washington, D.C., for the next six years, as it has in every Senate election since 1974. This result reflects the state’s partisan leanings well, but if the McMullin candidacy becomes nothing more than a historical footnote, with 30-point GOP victories returning as the norm, the state will be the poorer for it. A world in which Republican candidates are never tested in general elections because Democratic candidates can’t escape the national party brand is also a world with low levels of political accountability.

Are more competitive and meaningful general elections in the state possible? Perhaps, but such a change would require both party leaders and voters to see beyond national labels and give priority to the state’s distinct interests, which may not fit neatly in either national party’s constellation of concerns. Give Democratic leaders credit for seeking a broader and more centrist coalition that has a better chance at statewide electoral success, even if they did not succeed this time.

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Long term, what is likely to happen? Will Lee feel the need to move beyond his base and engage broader concerns? Will Democrats find ways to credibly distinguish themselves from the national party brand? Perhaps most importantly, will voters prioritize state-level interests and concerns above national party labels, especially as national parties change? Meaningful accountability in a healthy system of democratic representation depends on the answers to these questions.

Christopher F. Karpowitz is co-director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University.

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