Utah GOP party members differ on 2024 caucus turnout

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s Republican Party chair said he’s pleased with the Utah GOP caucus turnout on Super Tuesday.

Speaking on Utah’s Morning News on Wednesday, state GOP chair Robert Axson told host Tim Hughes that nearly 100,000 Utahns turned out to vote in the Republican Presidential Preference Poll during caucus meetings on Tuesday. 

“We had excellent turnout. A lot of people all across the state wanted to lean in and participate in the process, which was fantastic,” he said.  

But KSL has been crunching the numbers of the Utah GOP caucus turnout, and they tell a different story. 

Using current Utah voter registration numbers and presidential preference results provided by the Utah GOP, members of the KSL television and KSL NewsRadio staff crunched some numbers.

As of 8:11 a.m. on Thursday, March 7, dividing the number of votes, 83,407 by the number of active registered Republicans, 890,637, resulted in a 9.36% caucus turnout (with an unknown number of precincts still outstanding.)

KSL at Night host Taylor Morgan told Jeff Caplan’s Afternoon News that number is disappointing. Especially when you look at the turnout for the state-run primary in 2020.

“More than three times as many Republicans participated in that presidential primary than participated yesterday,” Morgan said. “[Less than ten percent] of Republicans statewide participating in your presidential primary vote on Super Tuesday is a very, very poor turnout, Jeff. There’s no spinning that number.”

Please note that officials haven’t finalized these numbers and that there are still precincts left to be counted. Therefore, turnout numbers will change. KSL will try to update the totals periodically. 

Related reading:

• Utah voters share thoughts on Tuesday’s caucus
• The Utah Democratic Primary went smoothly, party credits mail-in voting
• Nikki Haley to exit GOP presidential race Wednesday

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