Utah Republicans Deliver A Fatal Blow To Donald Trump’s Reeling Presidential Campaign

Lately, Wilson said, voters have been seeking McMullin out rather than him seeking them out.

Trump had already been polling well behind past GOP candidates in the state when a video was released last Friday showing Trump bragging about kissing and groping women without their consent.

With no candidate in hand, Better for America began petitioning to have a yet-unnamed independent candidate listed on various ballots across the country even before the convention.

In addition, the poll shows that 94 percent of Utahns have seen the video, and a majority of Utahns want Trump to withdraw as the Republican party’s nominee.

McMullin’s surprise performance in Utah indicates that he could be the first third-party presidential candidate to win electoral votes – if he can continue his rise. McMullin supports free trade agreements, like TPP, and says he wants to help people who are in the USA illegally with moving toward citizenship. “They’re both quite possibly the two worst people in the universe”.

McMullin has nearly no shot at winning the presidency. It might not even be a safe state for the GOP.

Weatherby says there’s a chance that McMullin could win Utah and it’s six electoral votes – votes that could be needed by Clinton or Trump to get the 270 to secure the top spot.

But McMullin might have a history-making moment in his reach.

That could be a major advantage for McMullin, who was born in Utah, is a graduate of Brigham Young University and is a Mormon. Democrats are also intensifying their efforts as the race here tightens. Mid-September? Trump had a nine-point lead and McMullin at 12 percent. Polls conducted in the aftermath of the story showed Trump down across the board. The campaign seized on it to try to raise its profile here and in the roughly 30 other states where he is a write-in candidate.

“Utah’s large number of Republican voters could never support the Democrat, but they are having an awfully hard time coming to terms with their own nominee”, Murray said. Trump appears headed to a loss, regardless. Yet, they remain a minority within the Republican Party – which is deeply disappointing.

Abandoning Trump has been hard for lifelong Republicans such as Aimee Winder Newton, who holds a seat on the Salt Lake County Council.

This unexpected change presents an important opportunity for conservatives in Congress.

McMullin’s support in Utah is growing. He has also served in the Central Intelligence Agency.

“These are long odds, but we knew this going into it”.

His connection to the Mormon church has given him a particularly strong foothold among Utah’s broad Church of Latter Day Saints community in a way his fellow third-party competitor hasn’t been able to attain.

But the crowd also cheered when he called for criminal justice reform. Rasmussen said Trump has shown that he is actually a liberal and that the delegates don’t trust him.

Trump wasn’t her first choice in the Republican field but she went to the Republican convention as a delegate and made a decision to give Trump a chance. “I’m fighting for them”, she said. But any election bad enough for the Republican to lose Utah nearly certainly puts the Senate in Democratic hands, and could even tip the House. He has never before held or run for elected office. McMullin is the one enjoying a surge of attention.

“There are core issues that are bigger than Donald Trump”, Perry said, “Issues like the next Supreme Court nominee”.