The “blue wave” of the 2026 midterms crashed into Utah, washing over deeply red areas in a way that has transformed how state Republican leaders view the political landscape. It made a smaller splash in Utah than in some other Republican-leaning states, like South Carolina, Texas and Kansas, where statewide seats flipped to Democrats for the first time in 20, 30 or 90 years, but may have carried Utah further than any other state, based on an analysis of overall Republican margins between Utah’s four U.S. House districts.
Much of this was the result of tidal forces emanating from Washington, D.C., Governor Spencer Cox said during a monthly PBS news broadcast on Monday, pointing to motivating factors like the cost of living, government corruption, immigration enforcement and the war in Iran. However, Cox said an upheaval of the sort witnessed last week in Utah cannot be explained away as an unfortunate symptom of federal policies. It is time for state leaders to rethink their approach, he said.
The 30-point pivot puts Utah on top of a list compiled by pollster Nate Silver. Utah is No. 1 out of the states that experienced the largest Democratic gains in U.S. House vote since 2022. The other states include North Dakota, with a shift of 29 percentage points; Alabama, with a shift of 28; Indiana, with a shift of 25; Mississippi, with a shift of 24; Wyoming, with a shift of 23; and Louisiana, with a shift of 22. President Donald Trump won each of these states by at least 19 percentage points in 2024.
Speaker of the Utah House Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Senate President Evan Vickers, R-Cedar City, took a similarly introspective tack. After years of exerting legislative energy to oppose ballot initiatives, congressional maps and public backlash on high-profile bills, Utah’s most powerful lawmakers said their responsibility is clear: rebuild trust.
Schultz is a stalwart supporter of the president’s MAGA vision, but he agreed that Utah’s electoral carnage is partially downstream from what the second Trump term has done to the GOP brand. “Certainly there’s a lot of frustration with President Trump and some of the way that he’s handled some of the issues,” he said. “There’s some fair criticism around, did he go too far? Has he not gone far enough?” But Schultz insisted if the Legislature had done its job it would have remained immune to the midterm earthquake.
The shift was seismic. Identical state legislative seats in Utah where Republican candidates had an opponent saw a dip in GOP winning margins of more than 23 percentage points from 2022 to 2026. This produced several stunning upsets. Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, who was expected to become the next Senate president, lost to his Democratic challenger by more than 6 percentage points, despite winning by 24 points in 2022. Representative Norm Thurston, R-Provo, was ousted by a 27-year-old progressive, David Chappell, in a district that swung 54 percentage points in its U.S. House vote. Thurston’s loss marked the 16th seat to be flipped from Republican to Democrat, preventing the state House GOP from securing a two-thirds, 50-seat supermajority for the first time in around three decades.
Utah joined eight other heavily Republican states which lost legislative supermajorities in at least one chamber: Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and South Carolina. While Florida Republican leaders claimed to have weathered the blue wave unscathed, their Legislature likewise lost at least 16 seats. Some previously GOP-led legislatures, like Arizona’s, flipped entirely to Democratic control.
For Schultz, Arizona is a cautionary tale. Key to preventing that fate, according to Schultz, is working through conservative schisms that would otherwise force the party toward the “fringes.” This will enable the state to “insulate” itself from the national stage. “Utah is different,” he said. “How do we move forward keeping it the Utah Way? Common sense conservative values. We think that’s where the vast majority of Utahns are at, and that’s where we’re going to continue to focus.” That includes a focus on education funding, data center transparency and supporting the Great Salt Lake, he said.
What Utah saw requires more than revamped policy proposals, Cox told voters on Monday. It demands a reform in how elected officials interact with their constituents, he said. Cox said he warned legislative leadership that perceived overreach on certain issues, particularly redistricting, gave the impression lawmakers were out of touch. Cox’s own takeaway is to do less and listen more. “I want to spend more time listening to Utahns,” Cox said in prepared remarks. “Because I believe that good leadership means we have to be willing to listen more, learn, and sometimes change course.” The governor also pointed to a ban on public sector collective bargaining agreements which was later repealed and attempts to restrict citizen ballot measures as moves that were detrimental to public confidence.
Cox also expressed worry about external factors. He referenced the amount of out-of-state money flooding into Utah to support Democratic-leaning efforts, like the roughly $2 million in outside money spent to defeat the Legislature’s Amendment B proposal. “I would be more concerned if I thought it was a purely ideological shift,” he said. “Not listening to people is not a conservative or liberal issue. I think that’s just what happens when a party has been in power for a long time.”
Schultz and Vickers communicated their priorities of affordable homeownership, quality K-12 classrooms and better water management. They agreed with Cox that the process must be improved. Legislators can no longer assume voters will trust them simply because they are elected, according to Vickers. Legislators are expected to actively persuade voters that new laws are in their interest through public outreach. “It is definitely a new day dawning, I guess,” Vickers said.