Utah is #1 most Republican, #9 most conservative, and also #17 most conservative.
On election day, Utah’s Republicans increased their veto-proof legislative majorities by 5 seats in the House and 1 in the Senate. Does that make Utah the most Republican state?
Hard to say. You could compare states by seeing how many legislators are Republican, which favors Idaho over Utah. Or you could just look at the voters. But even there, voters send mixed messages.
In terms of how many voters tell pollsters that they are Republican, Utah is indeed the most Republican state. But in terms of how many voters tell pollsters they are conservative when asked to identify their own general ideology, Utah ranks #9. And if you look at how many voters take conservative stances on specific policy questions, Utah ranks #17.
The weird thing is that all those data come from the same set of polls. So Utah is #1 most Republican, #9 most conservative, and also #17 most conservative.
These numbers come from a study that looked at polling data from 2008, but I’d imagine that things haven’t changed much since then. You can read more about the study here.
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