Utah Is Different

Utah’s population grew faster than that of any other state between 2010 and 2020. Salt Lake City has the lowest jobless rate among all big cities, at 2.8%, compared with a national rate of 5.2%. That the state has rebounded so well from the downturn caused by the covid-19 pandemic is thanks to the Wasatch Front, an urban corridor that includes Salt Lake and Provo, home to Brigham Young University. The four counties that make up the Wasatch Front account for at least 80% of Utah’s economic activity, reckons Juliette Tennert, an economist at the University of Utah.

From The Economist.

Utah also ranks at or near the very bottom for metrics of gender equality.

More red states has weak economies. Most blue states have strong economies and have been less sexist on a longstanding historical basis. Many people attribute the economic success of blue states to substantial female labor participation.

Population growth nationally is concentrated in bluer urban areas while rural areas have stagnant or declining populations, yet many blue states overall have falling populations, while many red states overall have rising populations. But high female participation in the workforce and higher education tends to reduce birth rates.

For readers not familiar with U.S. cultural geography and history, Utah is predominantly Mormon in religion, a conservative and fairly divergent form of Christianity in the U.S. that often makes common cause with white Evangelical Christians, despite mutual antipathy between members of  the two faiths and very different cultural norms. Evangelical Christianity emerged in the slave states of the American Southeast, starting in earnest in the Second Great Awakening despite some more remote historical antecedents. The Church of Latter Day Saints (i.e. Mormonism) started in New England and was repeatedly exiled to the West after bouts of local opposition with stops in Ohio and Missouri before establishing a permanent home in Utah which is in the Mountain West.

It makes sense that a state with fewer women in the workforce, like Utah, will have a lower unemployment rate for people who are still in the workforce. 

It is also not surprising that a state where people have many children and start doing so early out of religious motivations have high rates of population growth, especially in a period when immigration from abroad has been very modest.

It is, however, rather surprising that Utah can have such an urban population, which is reasonably well educated, affluent, and connected to the global community, yet remain a red state.

Obviously, religion and culture explain that to a great extent. But Mormon Republicans are a very distinct subset and faction within the Republican party, and they don't fit many GOP stereotypes.