For decades, Utah has been a ruby-red fixture on America’s political map — a state where Republican candidates win not just consistently, but commandingly.
But there’s growing evidence that it might not stay that way forever. And if Democrats are serious about ending their current sojourn in the political wilderness and growing their influence in red states, they’d be wise to look west — not just to the vote-rich plains of Texas, but to the politically promising peaks of the Beehive State.
I realize that may sound far-fetched. After all, Utah hasn’t gone blue in a presidential election since 1964. The last Democrat to win statewide was Attorney General Jan Graham in 1996 — nearly 30 years ago. The last Democrat to be elected governor was Scott Matheson, 45 years ago. So yes, there are reasons to scoff at the very idea of “Blutah” — a rallying cry I scrawled on a wall when leading Hillary Clinton’s quixotic campaign to flip the state in 2016.
And yet, it wouldn’t be the first time a seemingly solid red state shifted left. In fact, Utah’s trajectory today looks a lot like what we’ve seen happen in two neighboring Intermountain West states that once reliably sent Republicans to the Senate and White House, but — after years of rapid population growth, increased demographic diversification and deepening discontent with the direction of the national GOP — are now represented by Democrats in virtually every statewide office.
A familiar blueprint
When I moved to Colorado as a child in 1992, the state had voted for the Republican presidential candidate in nine of the last 10 elections. Other than a brief zag towards Bill Clinton in an idiosyncratic three-way contest later that year, that GOP chokehold would continue all the way until 2008 when — after years of rapid in-migration, college-educated growth and smart Democratic organizing — Colorado finally flipped blue for Barack Obama. And the Centennial State hasn’t looked back, with Democrats having won every major statewide race since that moment.
Diagonally across the Four Corners, Arizona has followed a similar path. For decades, the state was Barry Goldwater’s stronghold, with Republicans winning 16 of the 17 presidential elections held between 1952 and 2016. But as with their neighbors to the northeast, the GOP’s decades-long run of dominance was not destined to last forever.
Supercharged by the nation’s second-fastest growth rate in the first decade of the 21st century, Arizona’s rapidly shifting demographics provided the fuel for the Trump-era suburban revolts that would eventually propel Joe Biden to victory in the state by a razor-thin margin in 2020.
Arizona Democrats have only continued to build momentum from there — winning both the governor’s mansion and one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats in 2022, and then retaining the other in 2024 even as Trump managed to narrowly wrangle the state back into his column at the presidential level. Today, Arizona is arguably the nation’s most competitive battleground.
While Utah is certainly years away from becoming an Arizona-style swing state, much less a Colorado-esque blue bastion, there’s no doubt that it is following the same path that its Western neighbors have already trod.
Utah was the nation’s fastest growing state between 2010 and 2020, driven by both high birth rates and in-migration from more liberal enclaves like California and Colorado. And as the state’s population continues to grow, so too does its diversity — racially, religiously and ideologically. The political implications of that change may not have shown up at the ballot box just yet, but the playbook for transforming them from hypotheticals into reality has already been tried, tested and proven. Twice.
The Trump problem
But Utah isn’t just following the Arizona-Colorado growth arc. It’s doing so with an added twist that makes it even more ripe for disruption: it’s one of the few deeply Republican states where Donald Trump has never been a great fit.
That’s not just anecdotal. Trump’s failure to capture a majority of the vote in his first run for the White House was just the first sign of his weakness in the state. In 2020, even without a third-party candidate on the ballot to siphon away support, Trump barely cracked 58%, underperforming relative to other Republican candidates on the ballot. And in 2024, when more than 89% of counties nationwide shifted to the right, Utah bucked the trend with a majority of the state’s 29 counties shifting to the left.
Why? Because Utah’s political culture is different. Much of that stems from the influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While not partisan, the church has taken strong stances that run directly counter to Trumpism — including robust support for immigration and refugees. That ethos resonates in communities across the state, especially among devout Latter-day Saints, many of whom feel increasingly politically homeless in today’s Trump-centric GOP.
Change is already happening
The early signs of a potential realignment are already beginning to emerge — if you know where to look.
Brigham Young University researcher Jacob Rugh has been hot on the trail. In a series of detailed maps and charts shared via his Bluesky account, Rugh documents how Utah was the only state in 2024 where Vice President Kamala Harris outperformed Joe Biden’s 2020 numbers, propelled by 81% of suburban cities located along the Wasatch Front trending blue — making it the only major metro area in the country to defy the broader lurch to the right.
What’s driving this counterintuitive shift? While the growth and diversification of the broader Utah electorate is almost certainly playing a role, the most promising harbinger for Democrats is the transformation of the Latter-day Saint vote — a bloc that accounts for more than half of Utah’s population.
Once the most reliably Republican-leaning group in America (as recently as 2016), Rugh’s analysis reveals that Latter-day Saints shifted an additional two points toward Democrats in 2024, even as the national electorate moved toward Republicans by 6 percentage points — just the latest step in a 28-point leftward swing among Latter-day Saints over the past 20 years.
And there may be even more promising news for the blue team on the horizon. In a recent deep-dive on the continuing evolution of the Latter-day Saint vote, Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan Burge noted a stark generational divide, with younger Latter-day Saints being nearly twice as likely to identify as Democrats than those older than 60.
If those trends hold as future generations reach voting age — and older, reliable Republican voters continue to leave both the electorate and this mortal coil — it could have significant repercussions for the balance of political power in the Beehive State.
The coming map fight
If Democrats want to capitalize on these changes, success won’t happen overnight. But the party may soon have a golden opportunity to regain a foothold in the state’s congressional delegation and continue building momentum.
In 2020, Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature defied the independent redistricting commission established by voter initiative in 2018 and cracked Salt Lake County — the state’s most populous and reliably blue area — into four different congressional districts, diluting Democratic strength and ensuring a GOP lock on all seats.
That strategy may have an expiration date. Due to its skyrocketing population growth, Utah is likely to gain a fifth House seat after the 2030 Census, which will make it significantly harder to continue dividing up the state’s Democratic voters without creating at least one competitive — or even Democratic-leaning — district. At some point, the math likely won’t work anymore.
But a lawsuit currently working its way through the courts could change the game even sooner. A coalition of Utahns has challenged the legislature’s 2021 redistricting map, arguing that it violates the will of voters who passed Proposition 4 in 2018. The Utah Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs last year, ruling that the legislature cannot alter citizen-initiated ballot measures without a compelling reason — and ongoing proceedings at the lower court level could result in Utah soon having new maps that allow for meaningful competition, potentially even before next year’s midterm elections.
That wouldn’t just benefit Democrats at the federal level. It could also begin to transform the political climate for legislative, county and city races across the state.
The work ahead
Of course, none of this will happen on its own. If Democrats want to compete in Utah, they have to show up — consistently and credibly.
What does that mean? For starters, it means making significant investments in building infrastructure to support voter registration, persuasion and mobilization.
It means crafting a Democratic brand that resonates with Utah voters — one rooted in common sense, faith-friendly, pro-democracy values, distinct from the caricatures of the national party — and cultivating a bench of strong candidates who can deliver that message with authenticity and optimism.
And it means doing more listening than lecturing, focusing on local issues like growth, housing, air quality and education that transcend partisanship and speak to Utahns’ everyday concerns.
I’m not naive. Blutah isn’t going to become a reality anytime soon. It may be a decade before investments made today bear fruit in statewide contests. But the point is that it can happen. Like Colorado and Arizona before it, Utah is evolving. But political change doesn’t just happen — it’s built.
If Democrats want to build it here, the time to start is now.
Steve Pierce, a contributing writer for the Deseret News, is a Democratic strategist and communications consultant who advises campaigns, causes and brands on matters of message and strategy.