In an out-of-the-ordinary race for governor, Democrat Brian King’s campaign says its polling shows King is within striking distance of Gov. Spencer Cox, trailing the Republican incumbent by 11 percentage points.
“With just a few weeks until Election Day, the dynamics of this race have shifted dramatically,” King’s campaign manager, Gabi Finlayson, said Wednesday.
The poll, conducted Sept. 27-28 by Public Policy Polling, shows Cox in the lead with 35%, followed by King at 24%, Republican write-in candidate Phil Lyman at 19% and Libertarian nominee Robert Latham at 3%. A sizable portion of voters, 18%, are unsure.
The pollster also asked the question with just King and Cox — since Lyman, as a write-in candidate, will not be listed on the ballot — and Cox led King in that scenario 45% to 32% with 23% undecided.
Cox’s campaign manager Matt Lusty did not respond directly to King’s polling numbers but castigated the Democratic nominee as one of the most liberal members of the Legislature and said that voting for Lyman could open a door for King in the race.
“Utahns don’t want a liberal, California-style Democrat as their governor,” Lusty said, “but by casting a protest vote in the general election for a third-party candidate, that’s what they may end up getting.”
Finlayson countered that “Utahns want a leader who can build commonsense, bipartisan coalitions — not someone who panders to both sides while driving us further apart.”
Internal polling often needs to be taken with a grain of salt, since candidates can use loaded questions to skew the results, but King’s campaign provided the full list of questions, which did not include any leading statements.
The poll also showed former President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris 54% to 39% in the chase for the White House among Utah voters. Trump carried the Beehive State with 58% of the vote in 2020 to Joe Biden’s 38%.
The survey of 612 Utah voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Finlayson said the poll shows King winning among independents 47% to 35%, while Lyman is “siphoning votes directly from Cox’s base.”
King's gubernatorial poll by Robert Gehrke on Scribd
No Democrat has won the governor’s race since Scott Matheson was reelected in 1980, and the last time a Democrat finished within 30 points of his challenger was in 2004, when Matheson’s son, Scott Matheson Jr., lost to Jon Huntsman Jr. by 16 points.
King has been outspent by nearly 7 to 1 so far in the campaign, with King’s team shelling out $481,621 through the end of September compared to $3.3 million expended this year on Cox’s reelection bid.
The last public poll in the governor’s race was conducted by the Utah Debate Commission, which showed Cox well ahead of King, 48% to 27%. And a survey conducted in early August for the Deseret News had Cox with an even larger lead, 56% to 17%.
Since that time, Cox has reversed his long-standing refusal to endorse Trump, throwing his support behind the former president after the attempted assassination of the GOP Oval Office nominee in Pennsylvania.
Cox later drew criticism for appearing at an event at Arlington National Cemetery alongside Trump. The two politicians posed for photos among the headstones with the family of Marine Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, who was killed in Afghanistan.
(@GovCox via X) Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, far right, poses for a photograph with the family of Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover and Republican candidate for president Donald Trump at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Monday, Aug. 26, 2024.
Members of Trump’s campaign aides reportedly had an altercation with cemetery staffers when they were told that photographs for political purposes were not allowed. Cox’s campaign also sent out an email with a photo of the event and a fundraising solicitation. The governor later apologized, blaming a campaign staffer who he said sent it without permission.
Neither of the earlier polls included Lyman as an option.
Earlier this year, King and Lyman appeared in an unconventional ad — paid for by King’s campaign — in which the two highlighted their political differences but agreed that “Spencer Cox should not be our next governor” and encouraged voters to choose one of them.
Republican officials condemned Lyman for helping to bolster the King campaign.
