Utah presidential polls 'all over the map'
Salt Lake City — (KUTV) Take your pick.
Over the last two weeks, six Utah presidential polls have been released, with some very different results.
A CBS News poll showed Donald Trump up by 17 points. A Y2 Analytics poll called it a tie between Trump and Hillary Clinton. An Emerson poll had independent Evan McMullin ahead by four percent.
"I think that what we're seeing in the state of Utah is an electorate that's in flux," said Dave Spatafore, who for years was a professional pollster, and who thinks Utah Republicans are now conflicted. "One day they feel better about (Trump), the next day not so much."
Spatafore said he puts more stock in local pollsters, rather than national polling entities, which he thinks do not understand the nuances of Utah voters.
"It's hard to say that these polls are wrong," said Josh Light, who used to run a political data analytics company. "You have to know how the poll collected its data."
But doing that would be dizzying.
"It would be like looking at each individual stock in your mutual fund, and reading the prospectus," he said. "That's a tremendous amount of work to do."
Still, Light has perceived a big disconnect between what mainstream media is reporting and what's registering on social media. He said Trump's poll numbers may be undervalued.
"I would say me personally, as an individual, I'm more skeptical of the polls today that I was in 2012," he said.
At a Main Street Trax station on Friday, a woman named Marni said she had gone back and forth on who might get her vote.
"I considered voting for Trump, then the more things went on, I said 'I can't do it.' "
But a graduate student named David said he's undecided, but still told a polling company he would for Hillary Clinton, though there was a good chance he could change his mind.
"My honest answer to them was Hillary, was just to give them an answer."
