Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch

A wave of independent candidates this year wanted to “make history” and maybe even “reshape the state’s political landscape” by winning several seats in Utah’s long Republican-dominated Legislature.

Those were their hopes, at least, in a news release issued the morning of Election Day.

Turns out, though, 2024 wasn’t their year.

Not a single unaffiliated or third-party candidate gained enough traction to succeed over their Republican opponents this election cycle. Utah remains a solidly red stronghold, with the GOP maintaining its ironclad, supermajority control in the Legislature. Democrats flipped one seat in the House, but are on track to lose another, offsetting that gain. Republicans still have 23 seats in the Senate to Democrats’ six. In the House, the GOP has 61 seats to Democrats’ 14.

But of the 13 unaffiliated candidates on the ballot this year for congressional, statewide, legislative and school board races, several waged competitive bids in the House and Senate — though ultimately they all fell short. These three turned out to be among the closer runs, according to unofficial results as of Wednesday:

• House District 3: Unaffiliated candidate Patrick Belmont got 46.34% of the vote to Republican Jason Thompson’s 53.66%.
• House District 39: Unaffiliated candidate Jessica Wignall got 44.62% of the vote to Republican incumbent Rep. Ken Ivory’s 55.38%.
• Senate District 16: Unaffiliated candidate Monnica Manuel got about 42.56% of the vote to Republican incumbent Sen. Wayne Harper’s 57.44%

Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch

This election, in many ways, was a test. Never before had Utah seen more than a dozen independent names on the ballot. While most independents launched their campaigns organically, several were recruited by Matt Lyon, managing partner of the firm Blueprint Public Affairs.

Lyon used to be a campaign manager for Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, and is a former director of the Utah Democratic Party who has been involved with multiple progressive causes and candidates. In 2022, Lyon was a consultant for Evan McMullin, an independent who unsuccessfully challenged Republican Sen. Mike Lee. This year, Lyon’s firm used election data from McMullin’s Senate run to target legislative districts as potentially competitive for independents.

After unofficial election results showed all independent candidates trailing further behind than they’d hoped, Lyon told Utah News Dispatch he’s waiting for final election results to dive deeper into the precinct-level data to find out more about how and why independents fell short. But overall, he said voters nationally and locally seemed to stick to the two-party system.

“In general, this seemed to be a very partisan year and people mostly stuck to their camps,” Lyon said.

Why independents struggled

Republicans, in particular, benefitted from a strongly “engaged” voter base, Lyon said. “And people that were engaged were pretty strongly partisan.” That’s perhaps not surprising in a presidential election year when the two-party system was as entrenched as ever on the national stage, and a year when Republicans were particularly fired up.

Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch

That’s disappointing to independent candidates like Belmont, a water scientist, energy expert and Utah State University professor from Logan. Along the campaign trail, he said it was clear there are plenty of Utah voters wanting something different from the two-party system — but they weren’t driven to the polls, and those who showed up largely stuck to their parties.

“There was a lot of tribalism,” he said. “And I think a big part of it, especially in my district, was young people just did not show up again.”

Belmont predicted that voter turnout among 18- to 30-year-olds will be low this year, at least in his district, home to Utah State University. That could have also hurt other independents’ performances, like Lori Spruance, a professor at Brigham Young University, who relied on young voter engagement in otherwise highly conservative areas like Provo. She got 34.3% of the vote to Republican incumbent Rep. Keven Stratton’s 65.68%.

Young voters already have a tendency not to turn up to the polls like their older counterparts, but Belmont said his campaign “did a lot of outreach” to young Utahns in hopes to get them involved in an independent movement. But talking politics with them can be a challenge.

“I see it on their faces every day. They are worn out. They are exhausted. They are grossed out by politics and all the toxic discourse that has become so pervasive in politics,” Belmont said. “And I was really trying to show them I’m a different candidate. A scientist, somebody who’s been doing lots of work to promote civil discourse. … And, for whatever reason, they still did not show up at the polls. And that hurts.”

In 2022, Belmont ran as a Democrat against the then-Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan Johnson. That year, Belmont got slightly less support (43.4% of the vote) as a Democrat than he did this year as an unaffiliate.

“It’s hard to know how much to attribute that to the fact I was running as an independent,” Belmont said, though he added this year “there were more people who really seemed open to hearing my message.”

“In my last campaign, I knocked 6,000 doors, and I just heard it a lot, that people liked the things I was working on, the expertise I would bring, but they could never vote for a Democrat.”

Belmont said he’s considered himself an “independent almost my entire voting life,” but he ran as a Democrat two years ago because “certainly my platform is better aligned with a lot of the things the Democratic Party is working on” relating to environmental efforts. Meanwhile, “the Republican Party, to a large degree, has abandoned science,” he said. On the other hand, though, Belmont said he aligns in some ways with conservatives in that he believes in “limited government.”

“But, you know, I am an independent, and it felt good for me to run as an independent,” Belmont said. “It’s much more true to who I am.”

However, this year, even though more unaffiliated candidates jumped into Utah races than ever before, Belmont said “national politics definitely overshadowed a lot of what happened here in Utah,” and he predicted that’s largely why independents struggled to gain enough of a foothold.

Where do Utah’s independent candidates go from here?

For him, Belmont said it’s too early to think about another campaign in the future. But he’s also worried that if something doesn’t change, politics will continue to be driven by party politics rather than solving problems.

“I’m somebody who is much more interested in problem solving than I am in sitting in one party,” he said. “And I’m very concerned as a country that we’re not talking to each other in ways that are going to move us forward. And I think we can only do that if we can start ditching some of the party politics and that whole mentality.”

Belmont said running as an independent also came with unique challenges, from “both sides.”

“I mean, there were Democrats who were furious with me, who tried to put up roadblocks in front of me because I ran as an independent,” he said. “And there were certainly a lot of Republicans who were not happy either.”

Though he doesn’t know exactly yet what he’ll do next, Belmont said he’ll try to keep the independent mentality alive in some way.

“Moving forward, everything that I’m going to be doing, however I do it, is going to be about bringing people together to have real conversations, hard conversations, building community and trying to pull this country together,” he said. “Because I just don’t feel like we can move forward as divided as we are.”

While he’ll be unpacking the data to learn more about what happened this year — was there a Republican wave, a Democratic drop off, a lack of young voter turnout, or maybe all of the above — Lyon said the future of any independent movement in Utah will largely depend on grassroots involvement and interest.

“The question of whether the independent movement continues will be based upon if there is still interest that moves forward and will continue to be organic, and if we can help support that movement, we will,” Lyon said.

Nonetheless, Lyon applauded Utah’s unaffiliated candidates this year, saying they “did a great job being innovative and carving out some new ground and some new territory,” he said. “They certainly did tap into a growing group of people who are frustrated with our political process and our lack of political choices.”

Movements, though, take time, he said. He pointed to young voters and their frustrations with the two-party system as a population that may slowly fuel a growing number of independents.

“It may take some time, but a movement is led by lots of little things happening by lots of little people,” Lyon said. “It’s rarely by one, big fell swoop.”

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.