- A poll found 44% of Utah voters would vote in favor of Proposition 4 today.
- Two-thirds said they have not followed Utah's redistricting battle closely.
- GOP defends push to repeal Proposition 4, citing shifts in public opinion.
A new Deseret News-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll found that a plurality — but not a majority — of Utah voters continue to support the 2018 ballot initiative that created an independent commission to recommend new congressional maps.
In 2018, Utah voters approved the “Proposition 4″ initiative with 50.3% of the vote after a campaign by Better Boundaries. If a similar proposal were on the ballot today, 44% of respondents said they would support it, 20% said they would oppose it and 36% said they did not know.
“Support for Proposition 4 has declined somewhat since its narrow passage in 2018,” said Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. “Fewer than half of Utahns now say they would now support a Proposition 4 style redistricting commission.”
“The high share of undecided voters may reflect that many Utahns still like the idea of an independent commission, but the intense public and legal debate around redistricting has left them uncertain about the outcome and its potential consequences,” Perry said.
The poll was conducted by Morning Consult among 809 registered voters from Oct. 17-22. It found 16% of respondents would strongly support Proposition 4 today, 28% would somewhat support it, 14% would somewhat oppose and 6% would strongly oppose.
Respondents were also asked how closely, if at all, they have followed the recent congressional redistricting process in Utah stemming from a string of judicial rulings: 9% said very closely, 23% said somewhat closely, 41% said only a little bit and 28% said not at all.
Redistricting in the courts
The attention of the Utah Legislature has been focused on the seven-year-old Proposition 4 initiative in recent weeks as they pushed back against court orders to redraw electoral boundaries under the original intent of the law during a special legislative session.
On Thursday and Friday, 3rd District Judge Dianna Gibson reviewed maps submitted by the Legislature and plaintiffs, who argue Republican lawmakers ignored the anti-gerrymandering requirements of Proposition 4 that prohibit maps from disparately impacting one party.
Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the Utah Republican Party encouraged lawmakers to submit a favorable map for court approval. On Oct. 14, the GOP filed applications for an indirect initiative to repeal Proposition 4 and a referendum to let voters weigh in on the new congressional map.
An indirect, or legislative, initiative, would force the Legislature to vote on a bill repealing Proposition 4 at the start of the 2026 legislative session. It requires less than 71,000 signatures, compared to the roughly 150,000 that is needed to place the issue on the ballot.
Plaintiffs in Utah’s Proposition 4 case, including Mormon Women for Ethical Government and the League of Women Voters of Utah, requested that Gibson block the GOP initiative, saying it is indistinguishable from the Legislature’s attempt to amend Proposition 4, which was deemed unconstitutional.
On Friday, the Utah GOP withdrew their application for an indirect initiative, citing the legal challenge, and filed an application for a direct initiative. If successful, this would give voters the opportunity to repeal Proposition 4 on the November 2026 election ballot.
In an interview with the Deseret News, Katharine Biele, the president of League of Women Voters of Utah, said this is an effort by the Legislature to “confuse the public,” which has made some voters “just turn off,” as shown by the Deseret News-Hinckley Institute poll.
“This is a very cynical attempt from the Legislature to get the people to oppose what the people have already approved,” Biele said. “We simply want our representatives to represent their constituents.”
The League will continue to do its best to educate voters, Biele said. This has been complicated, she said, by the GOP supermajority’s efforts, which she believes flout Utah’s constitutional system by forcing voters to revisit an issue they have already voted in favor of.
Why did the GOP file an initiative?
However, Republican officials believe finding a work-around to the Utah Supreme Court’s restriction on amending some citizen initiatives is essential to upholding that constitutional system, which gives elected lawmakers — not judges — the final say on redistricting issues.
“It’s unfortunately not a surprise that when people can confuse the process of representative government by using the mechanisms of the court, they’ll continue to do so,” Utah GOP chair Rob Axson told the Deseret News.
The sponsors of the direct initiative include Axson, U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Attorney General Derek Brown, former U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop and several other local officials, who are acting under a political issues committee called Utahns for Representative Government.
The group said attempts by proponents of Proposition 4 to quash the GOP’s initiative are hypocritical because the GOP is following the “exact same process” — albeit in an effort to keep the courts and commissions out of the redistricting process.
“We will continue to very transparently and openly engage with the people of Utah to make sure that Utahns are deciding — not one judge, or a couple of judges — but that Utahns get to decide what they want this aspect of government to look like,” Axson said.
The Deseret News-Hinckley Institute poll reveals a shift in Utah opinion on Proposition 4, according to Axson, and also points to the fact that many voters do not have the bandwidth to get in the weeds on redistricting issues like legislators are tasked with doing.
Statewide ballot measures typically require significant education to understand. A Ballotpedia analysis found that in 2025 the average ballot initiative language required 21 years of education — the highest “readability score” since Ballotpedia began tracking in 2017.
However, increasing the accessibility of the process is exactly why Utahns initially approved an independent commission to recommend maps, Biele said.
Proposition 4 didn’t remove authority from lawmakers, according to Biele — it ensured that an obscure process would not be co-opted by partisan interests.
“In the end, they still have the power,” Biele said. “We’re not taking it away from them, we’re simply asking them to abide by Proposition 4 and create maps that are fair and comport to Proposition 4’s criteria.”