A new report released days before Utah Republican Party delegates will gather to select their new chair offers some insights about where Utah’s delegates “align and diverge” with other voters in their own parties.

The report published by the Utah Foundation — a nonprofit with the mission of informing Utahns with nonpartisan public policy research — didn’t find glaring differences that would suggest Republican or Democratic delegates are completely out of touch with the rest of their voting party members.

But it did find some notable differences, especially when it comes to demographics like age, sex and education, and issues that are top of mind when compared to the voters that delegates represent in the caucus and convention system.

The Utah Foundation report, informed by three separate surveys conducted by Y2 Analytics in 2024, outlined these key findings:

• Pessimism: Delegates from both parties are more pessimistic than their voter counterparts. The difference was more apparent among Republicans, with 55% of GOP delegates saying they felt the state was on the wrong track compared to only 42% of voters. Among Democratic delegates, 84% said they felt the state was on the wrong track, compared to 79% of Democratic voters.
• Ideological differences: Republican delegates are “somewhat more conservative” than GOP voters, the report said, “while Democratic delegates are about the same as Democratic voters.” While measuring “ideological consistency” based on answers to survey questions, pollsters found the median Republican voter is “less conservative” than the median Republican delegate, while the median Democratic voter and delegate are about the same. “In other words, Utah’s Republican delegates are more likely to have consistently conservative views than Republican voters, while Democratic delegates are about the same as Democratic voters,” the report said.
• Issue priorities: GOP delegates “place less importance on housing, roads, air quality, and crime when compared to Republican voters,” the report said, “while Democratic delegates focus more on education content and less on healthcare and homelessness when compared to Democratic voters.”
• Demographics: Most notably, delegates of both parties are more likely to fit specific democratic characteristics. “Both Republican and Democratic delegates are more likely than voters to be men, actively religious, older, and white, and have more education and higher incomes,” the report said.

“I think the key takeaway is there are quite a few differences between voters and delegates,” said Utah Foundation President Shawn Teigen during a call with media discussing the outcomes of the report on Wednesday. “But I think the most notable is in terms of demographics. (Delegates tend to be) actively religious and men, but also tend to be older, white, and have more education and higher incomes.”

When it comes to priorities, the survey also found some but not many differences between delegates and voters in both parties.

When asked to rank 17 priorities, Republican delegates tended to rank the Great Salt Lake and women’s rights as more important when compared to GOP voters. However, Republican delegates also ranked housing, roads, density and crime as slightly less important, while air quality ranked less important.

Democratic delegates, when compared to Democratic voters, ranked government overreach and crime as less important.

In conclusion, the report said that even though delegates tend to be more pessimistic than their voter counterparts, in general “their ideological positions show notable alignment with voters.”

“While voters and delegates have similar ideologies, the priorities look a little different for Republicans than they do for Democrats,” the report said. “The largest differences in priorities among the parties’ voters and delegates are air quality for Republicans and crime for Democrats, each of which was less important for delegates.”

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.