Evaluating Ben McAdam’s 2018 Upset Victory in Utah’s Fourth District
Utah’s Fourth District was an outlier during the 2018 midterms in several ways. Firstly, the candidates were not neatly divided into partisan identities. The Republican incumbent, Mia Love, had held the seat for two terms. She was the first and the only Black female Republican in Congress, the only Black Republican member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the daughter of immigrants, and a converted Mormon.
Ben McAdams, the Democratic challenger, was the mayor of Salt Lake County, part of which makes up the northernmost section of the Fourth District. This county is home to Salt Lake City, the urban hub of Utah with several universities that trends more liberal than the rest of the state. McAdams has a long history of bipartisanship and broke publicly from the Democratic Party in declaring that he would not vote for Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker if the Democrats took back the House. Results were not finalized until November 24, more than two weeks after election day, with McAdams securing a 694 vote margin of victory.
There are five key reasons for the competitiveness of this race, as well as McAdams’ impressive, if narrow, victory.
Firstly, the inclusion of Salt Lake County in the district significantly benefited McAdams’ campaign roots in the community, as well as the underlying demographics of the urban area. Particularly, Mormon values, while conservative, break significantly from Trump when it comes to immigration due to the charitable activities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). In addition, a large minority of Hispanic and Latino voters in the state broke sharply away from President Trump’s statements on immigration, as they were themselves the target of his anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Secondly, the lack of any sort of primary competition allowed McAdams to focus his campaign on the general election without having to worry about unifying his party or mobilizing supporters of other Democratic candidates.
Thirdly, President Trump’s relative unpopularity within Utah and Love’s close association with the administration and the president meant that she was the victim of a retrospective performance evaluation.
Fourthly, national events, including the mass shooting in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious testimony and confirmation to the Supreme Court, and the mailing of explosives to prominent Democrats, mobilized the Democratic base and further alienated Mormon voters from Trump. This is evident in the massive increase in turnout in Salt Lake County, which overwhelmingly benefited McAdams.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the lack of two-party partisanship in Utah aided in McAdams’ victory. Donald Trump failed to win a majority in the state, with Hillary Clinton and third-party Evan McMullin receiving a combined larger share of the vote in 2016. Without another third-party candidate in the 2018 midterms, a large proportion of unaffiliated voters — who overwhelmingly live in Salt Lake County — voted against Mia Love, and by extension, Donald Trump.
Demographics
Utah’s Fourth District is 79.7% white, with the largest minority group being Hispanic and Latinos, who make up 16.8% of the population. The economy in the Fourth District is strong, with an unemployment rate of just 3.6% and mean household income sitting at $87,025. The district includes part of the urban Salt Lake County at its north end, while the southern part of the district is more rural. The majority of people who live in the district are employed in some sort of white-collar service industry, including finance, real estate, healthcare, and other similar occupations, though there is a sizable minority of construction and manufacturing working-class jobs. While the Census does not collect data on religious affiliation, The Salt Lake Tribune queried The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2013 and found that just over 62% of the state was Mormon.
Tim Chambless, a political science professor at the University of Utah, said that “Mormon voters in Utah have two non-negotiable litmus tests: … abortion and same-sex marriage.” This has led the state to always vote for the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1964, and most recently in 2016, Donald Trump carried the Fourth District by 7 points. However, the Mormon Church has also taken more moderate stances on issues that are traditionally seen as Republican cornerstones, such as immigration. For example, Utah became the first state to establish a guest worker program in 2011, and illegal immigrants are allowed to legally drive a car in the state
In the past, the Fourth District has proved to be “purple” in federal elections. Incumbent Republican Mia Love first ran for the district in 2012, and narrowly lost to the Democratic candidate by 800 votes or 0.3%. In 2014, facing no incumbent, Love beat out her Democratic challenger by a five-point margin and did so again in 2016, this time by more than 12 points. Unsurprisingly, the more urban northern part of the Fourth District that includes part of Salt Lake County trends slightly more Democratic in its voting history, whereas the southern counties trend more Republican. The district was created in 2013, which means that voting data for the last 20 years is not available.
Primaries
Both McAdams and Love won their nomination through their respective party’s convention. This means that both candidates received enough votes from party delegates to skip a primary election. Effectively, both candidates were able to win the invisible primary within the district to gain enough party support to circumvent an election. In Representative Love’s case, her incumbency in the seat meant that she ran unopposed. In McAdams’ case, he was able to appeal to party delegates because of his electability and bipartisan appeal.
McAdams was the mayor of Salt Lake County, which is the most populous county in the state and constitutes part of the Fourth District. Furthermore, McAdams branded himself as a moderate who was willing to work across the aisle, stating “I am a moderate who certainly will be voting with my conscience. I’m not hiding who I am.” While McAdams did face opposition from the progressive wing of the Utah Democratic Party through a bid by Darlene McDonald, she ultimately failed to garner enough support to represent a serious challenge or indeed, even bring the contest into a primary election. The lack of a serious challenge within the Democratic Party over McAdams’ candidacy most likely increased his chances of winning the election, as he was able to move straight into the general election with a unified party and voting base instead of having to reorient his campaign following a divisive primary election.
Voter Turnout
Congressional elections suffer an average of a 12% deficit during midterm years when compared to the baseline of presidential elections. In general, since 1982 only about 40% of the eligible voting population has shown up to the polls during midterm elections.
However, voters also take the opportunity to treat midterms as a referendum on the sitting president. While President Trump was able to win Utah, he did so with a plurality, gaining only 45% of the vote compared to Hillary Clinton’s 27%.
According to Morning Consult, Trump’s unfavourability in Utah sat at -2 points the day before the election. Trump’s bombastic rhetoric on immigration likely did not sit well with the large Hispanic population within the Fourth District, and a general lack of popularity within the state would give a moderate Democrat like McAdams the chance to build up momentum and motivate voters.
Representative Love’s campaign manager himself said that “If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency in 2016, it wouldn’t be this close,” before further blaming Trump’s unpopularity for hurting Love’s chances.
This is exemplified through pre-election polling. Love was leading Republicans by 59 points in mid-October, compared to McAdams leading Democrats and Independents by 92 points and 40 points, respectively. This tied the race with 8% still undecided, since, despite McAdam’s larger polling lead, Republicans make up a larger proportion of Utah’s population. In fact, fewer than 15% of registered voters within Utah’s Fourth District are Democrats.
Utah’s turnout data is compiled by the Lieutenant Governor but is not released on a district level. Instead, it is calculated at the county level, but counties are split between multiple districts. For example, part of Salt Lake County is in the Fourth District, but the rest is located in the Third District. This means that drawing conclusions at the district level is imprecise at best.
With that said, in Salt Lake County, of which McAdams is the mayor and which is the most populated, urbanized, and Democratic-leaning county of the four counties that make up the Fourth District, turnout topped 81%, compared to 52% in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. The part of Salt Lake County that is in the Fourth District held a nine-point margin in favor of McAdams. The other three counties (Utah, Sanpete, and Juab) broke for Representative Love by 47, 55, and 59 points, respectively. Despite these large percentage differences, very few people live in and thus vote in these counties. For example, only 3,400 people voted in the section of Juab County that is in the Fourth District, compared to the 230,000 people who voted in the section of Salt Lake County that is included in the district. This indicates that McAdams was able to flip the seat by running up turnout in the most populous county in the district.
Social Groups
The most important social group within Utah’s Fourth District are Mormons by a large margin. As already stated, 62% of the state is Mormon and Representative Love converted to Mormonism. Mormons have also historically voted for Republican presidents in overwhelming numbers, which due to their majority in the state, maps directly onto Utah’s red voting record.
This historical context paints a somewhat bleak picture for Democratic politicians in the state. However, there are a few data points that suggest that an upset potential was possible among Mormons.
Firstly, in the 2004 and 2012 elections, 80% and 78% of Mormons voted for the Republican candidate. In 2016, President Trump was only able to capture 61% of the Mormon vote. An almost 20% decline is a massive indication that this voting group does not see President Trump favorably.
Secondly, an analysis of Representative Love’s voting record finds that she has voted along with President Trump’s policies approximately 96% of the time, effectively aligning her with a president who is unpopular on a bipartisan basis in her home state. Conservative voters who have their values shaped by the LDS Church do not look favorably upon Trump.
Finally, moving away from religion, the size of the Hispanic community within the Fourth District plays a key role in determining their voting behavior. In the run-up to the midterm election, President Trump deployed over 5,000 troops to the American-Mexican border to meet and block a caravan of refugees seeking asylum in the United States. This offered McAdams a chance to make an appeal directly to the Hispanic community, and indeed that is exactly what he did, publicly stating that his first priority would be to push to ensure protections for children of illegal immigrants covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The program provided job security and legal residency for children that had been brought into the United States as infants but was ended by President Trump early into his administration. While actual data on voting behavior in the district is not yet available, national data indicates that 67% of Hispanics and Latinos believe that the Trump administration’s policies have been harmful to them, and 62% say that they are dissatisfied with the way the country is being run – a clear indication of retrospective evaluation which could influence voting, as both Mormon and Hispanic constituents within the Fourth District held President Trump and Representative Love accountable for their policies on immigration.
Messaging
The largest jump in McAdam’s polling numbers occurred on October 5, which followed two large political events. The first was the progression of Justice Brett Kavanaugh from Senate hearings to a full confirmation vote. The second was the suspension of President Trump’s plan to end Temporary Protect Status for over 300,000 immigrants.
McAdam’s campaign released a number of advertisements that attempted to tie Love with President Trump, referring to her as a Washington insider constantly. At the same time, in his own ads, McAdam sought to distance himself from the Democratic political establishment, publicly stating that he would not vote for Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker if he were elected to Congress. This was an attempt to parry Love’s attacks against McAdams, which sought to tie him to the Clintons.
The second noticeable change in polling numbers occurred on October 28, which was the day that McAdams overtook Love in the polls for the first time. This happened two days after Cesar Sayoc was arrested for mailing explosives to prominent Democratic figures, and the day after a gunman stormed the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 people. Utah Governor Gary Herbert condemned the violence and ordered flags statewide to fly at half-mast, while Utah’s largest synagogue, which is located in the Fourth District, also held a candlelight vigil the night after the shooting.
A single debate was held between Love and McAdams on October 15, and McAdams took advantage of the opportunity to hit Love on immigration heavily. Mentions of immigration, immigrants, DACA, and other related terms pop up over a dozen times over the course of the hour long-debate.
However, there was no noticeable change in McAdams or Love’s polling numbers in the week following the debate, which would suggest that the national issues, such as the synagogue shooting and Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, that played out over the campaign had a larger effect on poll numbers. This again supports the notion that midterm elections are popular referendums of the sitting President and their party, as well as the idea that voters are evaluating the past performance of the administration — even as that performance changes day by day approaching election day.
Mia Love only made a single costly mistake over the course of the campaign, and it was related to campaign finance. Since she was running unopposed within the Republican Party, her campaign was not supposed to fundraise for a primary election. The Federal Election Commission investigated her campaign for allegedly raising over $1 million for the primary election, forcing her to return approximately $380,000 of that funding. At the time, Love held a nine-point lead in the polls, but that lead would dissolve within a month so that McAdams was trailing her by two points, well within the margin of error — though of course national events also played into the rapidly changing poll numbers.
Campaign Finance
Out-of-state groups spent significant sums of money in Utah’s Fourth District over the course of the election cycle. $1.14 million was spent by the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is a PAC aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan with a goal to maintain a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. On the other side of the aisle, Patriot Majority USA, which is a Super PAC aligned with the Democratic Party, spent approximately $500,000 on ads focusing specifically on Love’s FEC fundraising scandal, citing previous financial scandals over the course of her tenure as the representative for the district. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also set aside $235,000 in spending to target Love’s seat.
Interestingly, Love and McAdams’ campaigns were split over their sources of funding. McAdams raised roughly 75% of his funding in-state, whereas Love received 85% of her funding from outside of Utah. The disparities in funding sources can likely be attributed to the fact that McAdams’ is the mayor of Salt Lake County, and thus had a large base of local support to draw from, whereas Love is an incumbent with a wider fundraising circle to draw from. Indeed, Washington D.C. was her second-largest fundraising metro area.
In the end, Love was able to outraise and outspend McAdams by approximately $2 million, according to the most recent FEC data. While McAdams was able to fundraise more through his campaign’s local connections, Love enjoyed larger outside spending supporting her candidacy. The fundraising and spending by both candidates’ campaigns are emblematic of the nationalization of the race and a symptom of its competitiveness. Love spent over $4.6 million during her campaign, compared to McAdams’ $2.6 million — well above the average of $1.3 million set by House candidates in 2016 and the $1.2 million average set during the 2014 midterms.
Partisanship
Polarization played a large role in the results of this election, though the results themselves were not cataclysmic in scale. Incumbent Republican Mia Love lost by 694 votes, finally conceding the race on Saturday, November 24 — a full 18 days after the election was held and after numerous recounts. Love had previously won the district by a margin of over 30,000 votes in 2016, and she carried the part of Salt Lake County that is inside the district.
Therefore, it can be argued that Democratic mobilization played a role in flipping the seat. McAdams earned 20,000 more votes in Salt Lake County, the only county to vote Democrat, compared to the previous Democratic House candidate Doug Owens did in 2016. At the same time, Love received 10,000 fewer votes in the same county — mapping almost exactly onto the victory margins between 2016 and 2018.
To a certain extent, this can be seen as a reaction against the Trump administration. Trump only won a plurality, or 45.1%, of the vote in Utah in 2016. Hillary Clinton lost soundly with only 27.2% of the vote, though she did carry Salt Lake County by about 40,000 votes. However, a third-party candidate running as an independent in Utah named Evan McMullin was able to capture 21.3% of the vote - or more than the margin between Clinton and Trump in the state.
McMullin was a Mormon who had fairly standard Republican policies as a part of his platform — but who had also repeatedly and energetically criticized Trump on his stance on immigration and refugees. Without his presence in the congressional race, or any other comparable third-party candidate to draw votes away from the Democratic McAdams, anti-Trump, right-leaning voters who did not agree with the current administration’s immigration policies moved away from the Republican candidate. Further, since these voters would have supported an independent, they would not have the same baked-in intransigence that is normally associated with partisans. Voter registration data for Utah shows that unaffiliated voters make up roughly 36% of the state’s electorate — with 45.3% of registered voters in Salt Lake County being unaffiliated with a political party. This suggests the presence of a large swing voting bloc, which explains the Fourth District’s purple electoral history and McAdams’ ability to wrest control away from a two-term incumbent despite the state’s deep red voting record.
The Future
McAdams was able to pull off a Democratic upset by an extremely tight margin within a deeply Republican state due to a myriad of reasons. The most prominent of which is the general apathy that most Utahns hold for Trump. However, a close examination of the 2016 election shows that there has not been a marked shift in the state. More Utahn voters were opposed to Donald Trump than voted for him. McAdam’s victory can be attributed to several factors, as explored above, including high turnout, his campaign’s messaging, the lack of a primary competitor, his bipartisan record, and the underlying demographics of Salt Lake County, his home turf.
If Democratic results are to repeat in Utah’s Fourth District, and in the state more generally, the momentum and turnout that was evident in Salt Lake County must continue. While it may be difficult to do so without a polarizing national figure like President Trump, Democrats should be hopeful and should dedicate resources and time to supporting strong candidates in the state. Mia Love, as a black immigrant woman, is not a traditional Republican candidate, and McAdam’s success against her does indicate that there is an electoral future for the Democratic Party past 2018.
