How Redistricting Has Affected Utah’s Congressional Races
In 2018, voters passed a ballot measure to bring an independent redistricting commission to Utah. But the legislature reacted to the new law by watering it down, so that the commission was purely advisory in nature. As a result, when the commission recommended a series of maps that created one blue district around Salt Lake City and three red districts in the rest of the state, the legislature was able to ignore them and pass this map instead:
Utah’s new map has four solidly Republican districts and no Democratic, or even swing, districts whatsoever. During the last decade, the 4th District was somewhat competitive, so we had to pay attention to who won both parties’ primaries there and whether they were strong candidates. Now, the Republican primary is all that matters.