“toss up”
Utah is about 60% Mormon, and Trump is not the favorite of Mormons in any state, as far as we can tell. McMullin is only on the ballot in 11 states, but among those is heavily Republican Idaho, which has the nation’s second-highest percentage of Mormons (the state is about a quarter Mormon). The only recent poll there did not include McMullin, but it showed Trump at only a weak 40% of the vote, up 10 points on Clinton. McMullin is moving into Idaho as well, holding two well-attended rallies in the state over the weekend. We’re pushing Idaho from Safe Republican to Likely Republican just as a way to flag that the McMullin conservative insurgency has spread there as well. Trump is a much clearer favorite there than he is in Utah, however.
The problem is … he is the Mormon Candidate ™, and his support appears to be stuck with Mormon Republicans looking for a way out of Trump and …
Utah Republicans – particularly those who are members of the Mormon Church – have been rejecting Trump in large numbers, led by Gov. Gary Herbert and two GOP members of Congress. That’s provided an opening for McMullin, in a state where 63 percent of the population is Mormon.
In Idaho, 27 percent of residents are Mormon.
… Still. Fun if two states flip to some designated color not red or blue. (Or, for that matter, if Utah somehow goes ‘blue’ here.)
This does give us an interesting question. To certain Utah residents. If it looks like McMullin has consolidated a vote mass and Hillary Clinton lags behind, should Hillary Clinton voters leap over to McMullin to try to deny Trump these electoral votes?