Poll: Plurality of Utahns Less Likely to Vote for Mitt Romney After Backing Impeachment

A plurality of Utah voters found that they were less likely to vote for Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) reelection after he voted to convict President Donald Trump, according to a poll released Tuesday.

A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics with KSL survey revealed that Utahans have mixed feelings about Romney’s controversial vote to convict President Trump.

Romney was the first senator to vote to convict the president of his own party in an impeachment trial.

Thirty-seven percent of Utah registered voters said that they were less likely to vote for Romney’s reelection after learning of his support for impeachment, 36 percent said they were more likely, 22 percent said that the vote had no impact on their decision on whether to vote for Romney, and five percent were not sure if they will or will not vote for Utah’s junior senator.

Forty-nine percent of Utahns expressed positive emotions after learning of Romney’s vote to back impeachment, while 40 percent expressed negative emotions, and 11 percent felt neither positive or negative emotions over Romney’s vote.

Utahns’ opinion of Romney changes drastically when polling Republicans and Democrats. The survey reveals that 60 percent of Republicans had an adverse reaction to Romney’s vote for impeachment, while 31 percent were positive. In contrast,  83 percent of Democrats had a positive response to Romney’s vote, and 13 percent were negative.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen said, “Obviously, there’s a partisan take, Republicans not as happy as Democrats. In fact, Republicans are unhappy with it,” Rasmussen said. “But even the Republican reaction was a bit muted.”

Rasmussen said the sentiment was more, “We wish he would have done it the other way, but we’re not storming the barricades.”

Republicans were 56 percent less likely to vote for Romney, while 23 percent were more likely to vote for Romney after he backed impeachment. Amongst self-described conservatives, 62 percent said that they were less likely to back Romney after he voted for impeachment.

Sen. Romney claimed on Sunday that he “agonized” over the responsibility that came with his decision to vote to impeach Trump and said that he had “hoped beyond hope” he would not find Trump guilty.

Rasmussen surveyed 500 Utah registered voters between February 7 and 10 and the poll has a 4.5 percent margin of error.