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A Democrat-affiliated polling firm spent the last couple days surveying Utahns and has apparently produced some interesting results. The company, which does work for the liberal site Daily Kos, declined to release the details earlier than Tuesday when the pollster plans to start trickling them out race by race.
But the company did tweet several interesting details from its findings (with our thoughts attached):
"Huntsman favorability with Utah Dems: 69-25. With Utah Republicans: 44-44. Does hold Romney to a 68 pt lead head to head." - The fact Huntsman can't grab more than a 50-percent favorable rating in his home state isn't good for his campaign but the attraction among Utah Democrats is understandable given he was once joked to be the "best Democratic governor" since Scott Matheson Sr. The last line appears to imply a Huntsman-Romney head-to-head puts Romney at 68 percent and 32-ish for Huntsman.
"And 63% of non-Mormons in Utah support gay marriage. But only 13% of Mormons do." Pretty shocking number to most political observers; the pollster also tweeted that 30 percent of those polled were non-Mormon.
"This is kind of amazing- Obama has a 66% approval rating with non-Mormons in Utah." Caution on this one: if less than a third of those polled were non-Mormon, the margin of error here could be big.
"Utah has to be the only state in the country where a Dem can lead by 37 with [independents], get 20% GOP support, and only be up by 1 point." - That's got to be a poll on Rep. Jim Matheson's chances against Gov. Gary Herbert in the general election.
"Palin [favorability] in Utah is 32-58..." - Interesting given Utah's conservative flavor, but her numbers could be artificially low because of the state's support for Romney and Huntsman.
"There's bad news for Orrin Hatch. On several fronts." - That's just more of the same for the embattled senator, who has not polled well in the past year. We're told the polling firm did a head-to-head with Rep. Jason Chaffetz and a head-to-head with Matheson.
— Thomas Burr and Matt CanhamTwitter: @thomaswburr, @mattcanham