> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://utahpolitics.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How bad was Election Night for Utah Republicans? - URL: https://utahpolitics.news/utah-republicans-election-night-2026/ - Published: 2026-11-04T19:51:11.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-04T19:51:25.000Z - Author: Bryan Schott - Tags: Elections, Legislature, Republican Party Democrat Ben McAdams won Utah’s new 1st Congressional District by 50 points. For Republicans, the night only got worse from there. The “blue tsunami” that swept the country on Election Day hit Utah hard, and the Utah Republican Party took the brunt of it. Democrats lead in 15 Republican-held House seats, two independents appear headed to the Legislature, and the Senate majority leader is trailing a Democratic challenger. Voters also rejected a constitutional amendment backed by Republicans and a campaign to oust a state Supreme Court justice. ### Democrats won the statewide vote on Tuesday McAdams’ win was expected. The size of it was not. Democrats also ran closer than expected in two other districts, according to Wednesday afternoon results. - **District 2**: Republican Blake Moore leads Democrat Peter Crosby by 6.6%. - **District 4**: Republican Mike Kennedy leads Democrat Jonny Larsen by a little more than 10 points. Added together, Democratic candidates in the four congressional races, which cover the entire state, have received nearly 16,300 more votes than Republican candidates. ### House supermajority at risk The last time Republicans fell short of a supermajority in the Utah House was after the 1992 election, when they held 49 seats. The most House seats Democrats have flipped in any election since then is three in 2000. As of Wednesday afternoon, Democrats lead in 15 Republican-held House seats and trail by fewer than 500 votes in eight more. Meanwhile, Republicans fell far short in the handful of Democratic-held House seats they had hoped to flip to their side of the aisle. Many ballots remain uncounted, and some of the close races could swing back. Still, Democrats now have a real chance to break the GOP supermajority, something almost no one predicted. ### Independents break through Utah has never elected a candidate with no party affiliation to the Legislature. That could change this year. Two independents are leading in seats Republicans now hold: - **House District 3**: Patrick Belmont holds a solid lead over Republican incumbent Jason Thompson. - **House District 38**: Sergio Sotello leads Republican Chris McConnehey by more than 15 points. ### Senate leadership smackdown Republican Sen. Stuart Adams lost his re-election bid earlier this year, making him the first sitting Senate president to do so since 2002\. Now his likely successor is in danger, too. Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore trails Democrat Shana Anderson by almost 14 points, one of the night’s most surprising results. Anderson’s lead comes from Salt Lake County, home to nearly 90% of the district’s voters. She leads there by more than 17 points and is ahead in 79 of the 102 precincts that have reported. Cullimore leads in 22, and one is tied. Cullimore leads by more than 20 points in the Utah County portion of the district. He needs enough uncounted ballots there to close the gap. Republicans are also trailing in an open seat. In Senate District 5, Democrat CJ Hernandez leads Republican Jill Koford by 14.5 points. The seat opened when Republican Sen. Ann Millner decided not to run again. Nearly two-thirds of the district’s voters live in Weber County, where Hernandez leads by 20 points. Hernandez also leads by about 1,200 votes in the Davis County portion. Koford is winning Morgan County by nearly 2-to-1, but the vote totals are small: 797 to Hernandez’s 455. The GOP’s only remaining chance to gain a Senate seat is in District 11, where Republican Brooks Benson trails Forward Party incumbent Emily Buss by 232 votes. If Buss holds on, she would become the first Forward Party member elected to a state legislature anywhere in the country. Republicans would lose another seat in a Republican-leaning district. ### Amendment B backlash Amendment B would have required 60% approval for any statewide citizen initiative that raised taxes, instead of a simple majority. Voters rejected it by a wide margin. Fittingly, more than 60% voted no. Only nine of Utah’s 29 counties voted in favor, and none of them are among the state’s 10 most populous. The 20 counties that opposed the amendment have a combined population more than 28 times that of the nine that supported it. ### Pohlman stays on the bench Utah Republican Party leaders and elected officials spent most of the year urging voters to remove Utah Supreme Court Justice Jill Pohlman. Voters overwhelmingly kept her, with 77.5% voting to retain her. Republicans targeted Pohlman because she joined the court’s unanimous 2024 opinion that the Legislature violated the Utah Constitution when it repealed Prop. 4, the citizen initiative that created an independent redistricting commission. That ruling ultimately led to the 2021 congressional map being thrown out. The replacement map is the reason McAdams is headed to Congress instead of Republicans sweeping all four seats.