Utah Primary Polls 2016: Results Show Democrats For Bernie Sanders, Republicans For Ted Cruz

Looking at the 2016 Utah primary polls, it might seem like the state’s Democrats and Republicans will yield results that are a bit out-of-sync with the rest of the nation: Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz have leads on their rivals in the most recent survey.

For Democrats, that advantage isn’t quite as decisive. While Bernie leads in the latest Utah primary polls from Deseret News/KSL, its sample size is prohibitively small — just 194 likely voters responded. Furthermore, Sanders’ lead is far from commanding — he’s beating out Hillary Clinton by 8 percentage points in a poll where the margin of error is 7 percent.

It remains to be seen if Bernie can actually manage to land the 52-percent win to Hillary’s 44-percent showing, as the Utah primary poll’s results claim. Even if he does though, Utah, like all Democratic contests, is not winner-take-all. Sanders will be splitting a meager prize of 37 delegates — four of which are super delegates — with a candidate who is currently beating him by more than 300. The state is ranked 36th in terms of the Democratic delegates it offers.

Also bad news for Bernie in the Utah primary polls — older surveys with larger sample sizes showed Clinton with the advantage in the state. While taken more than a month before elections, a Utah Policy poll called Hillary coming in at 51 percent to Sanders’ 44 percent — a 7-point advantage, though in results with a 3.9 percent margin of error. This poll also had more than 3 times the number of respondents compared to the one from Deseret News.

Another Utah primary poll from January, 2016, showed Clinton with an even sharper lead — 10 percentage points ahead of Bernie. This Salt Lake Tribune/Surveys USA did, however, again feature a larger margin of error due to an extremely small sample size of 188 registered voters. Despite not quite being definitive, the state’s polling has more clarity than Idaho’s Democratic caucus polls.

Even if the frontrunner doesn’t crash on the Democratic side, the Utah primary is showing some of the most universal rejection of Donald Trump to date in the Republican race. Ted Cruz and John Kasich are both significantly ahead of Donald in the state known for its large Mormon community. Those two things are not unrelated, according to a report from Buzzfeed that documented all the ways that Trump was at odds with Utahns on Mormon values, such as a sympathetic solution to illegal immigrants.

Every single 2016 Utah primary poll backs up this hypothesis. In the most recent data from Y2 Analytics, Donald is making up a mere 11 percent of the vote — a humiliating number for a candidate who has been leading by that much in almost every state. This poll is also fairly reliable for several reasons. One, it had 500 respondents, more than double that of the Deseret News poll. Two, it falls in line with all of the other Utah primary polls up to this date — showing a near exact transfer of Marco Rubio’s winning poll numbers in the race to Ted and John.

According to that particular Utah primary poll, Cruz will triumph with 53 percent of the vote compared to Kasich’s 29 percent. With this kind of a massive lead, Ted’s supporters can rest assured that he will be the state’s victor. Even better for him, Utah’s 40 delegates are winner-take-all, though that isn’t the night’s biggest prize. Analysis of Arizona’s 2016 primary polls by Inquisitr is showing a Trump victory on the Republican side there.

Will the 2016 Utah primary polls see results for Democrats and Republicans going to Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz?

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