Adam R. Brown - Utah Politics and Government: American Democracy among a Unique Electorate

Among Americans and foreigners alike, mentioning Utah conjures diverse reactions. World-class skiing. Mormons. The Mighty 5 national parks. Exotic slot canyons. The Great Salt Lake. Schismatic polygamists. Majestic peaks. Charismatic wildlife. Bleak deserts. Cowboy films. The 2002 Winter Olympics. Green Jell-O. Sagebrush rebels. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Fry sauce. Noxious winter inversions. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Sundance Film Festival. Odd liquor laws. Pioneers. Utes. Ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs. Curious rock formations. Land speed records at the salt flats. The four corners. The Book of Mormonboth the scripture and the Broadway musical. The Salt Lake City Temple. Wilderness. If Utah were one of Americas economic or cultural powerhousesif Utah were a California, a Texas, a New York, or a Floridathese countless reactions would seem natural. Instead it seems that Utahhome to only 1 percent of the U.S. population and even less of its dry landpunches above its weight in American culture.

In politics, however, Utah punches below its weight, if it punches at all. Many reduce it to mere caricature: The reddest of red states, home to perhaps the nations most homogeneous votersreligiously, culturally, and politically. Believing it foregone, presidential campaigns have ignored Utah for decades. Hillary Clintons fleeting attention to Utah during her 2016 presidential campaign was the rare exception that proved the rule; when she dispatched her husband to headline a single fundraiser, then amplified that fundraiser with a single op-ed in a statewide paper, the Despite her efforts Clinton won only 28 percent of Utahs voteright between Barack Obamas share in 2008 (34 percent) and 2012 (25 percent).

Utah votes Republican so reliably that one can hardly blame national campaigns for ignoring it. However, Utahns themselves infer too much from this neglect, acting as though their votes matter as little within Utah as outside it. In a poll I asked Utah voters to rate how much various political institutions affect [their] personal life or financial situation. They answered using a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (a great deal). Respondents gave higher ratings to the U.S. Congress (4.2) than to the Utah Legislature (4.0); higher ratings to the U.S. president (3.9) than to the Utah governor (3.7); and higher ratings to U.S. courts (3.8) than to Utah courts (3.4). Overall 47 percent of respondents rated the federal governments influence on their lives higher than the state governments. Only 18 percent did the opposite.

These evaluations are misguided. Utahs legislature alone passes twice as many laws per year as the U.S. Congress, and Utahs courts alone hear twice as many cases per year as the nations entire federal court system. Utah is hardly alone, of course: collectively, Americas fifty state legislatures pass roughly one hundred times as many bills per year as Congress, and Americas state court systems consider roughly one hundred times as many cases as the federal courts. State governments are vastly busier than the federal government because they handle most of the policy realms that affect Americans daily lives. State governments run public schools and universities, set punishments for crime, charter cities, regulate corporations, manage pollution, build freeways and reservoirs, maintain parks, generate electricity, fight fires, purify drinking water, certify marriages and adoptions, police the streets, inspect restaurants, issue professional licenses, and zone neighborhoods. State policy has more impact on Utah lives and wallets than federal policy.

Utahns nevertheless remain embarrassingly ignorant of their state government. Respondents were also somewhat more likely to know that U.S. senators serve six-year terms (56 percent) than to know that Utah senators serve four-year terms (49 percent). Overall the average respondent answered 69 percent of the national questions correctly, compared to 44 percent of the Utah questions, a disappointing 25-point gap.