LOGAN – Local Democrats will host Dr. Jake Rugh on Tuesday, Feb. 24 at Utah State University, discussing a possible sea-change in Utah politics.
Rugh’s presentation, entitled “Hope for Utah’s Future: The 2026 Blue Wave and Beyond,” is scheduled for 5:30 to 7 p.m. on the USU campus, the exact location to be announced.
The event is being jointly sponsored by the Cache County Democratic Party and the College Democrats at USU.
Utah Democratic Party officials, especially former state party chair Diane Lewis, have been predicting a “blue wave” in Utah voting patterns since 2023.
In a social media post, the event’s sponsors say that Rugh is a Brigham Young University professor who has extensive data on how voting trends are shifting in the state of Utah, including Cache Valley.
Rugh’s academic vita indicates that he has specialized in “delving into meaningful issues and finding connections that can influence public policy and guide the development of an equal and just society.”
After completing his undergraduate work in Economics and Latin American Studies at BYU, Rugh earned masters and doctorate degrees in urban and regional planning from Princeton University.
He returned to BYU in 2012, where he teaches in the Sociology Department.
He has contributed to books, chapters or sections of studies including “From Segregation to Isolation: White Americans in the Age of Trump,” “Housing Segregation and the Forgotten Latino-American Story,” “America’s Unequal Metropolitan Geography: Segregation and the Spatial Concentration of Affluence and Poverty” and “The Intersection of Race and Class: Zoning, Affordable Housing and Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas.”
Rugh has also co-authored academic journal articles entitled “The Social Impacts of Innovation: Reproducing Racial, Gender and Social Class Inequality (2023)” and the recent “Deportations and Latino Segregation: The Residential Impacts of Interior Immigration Enforcement (2025).”
For additional information or to RSVP for the Democratic gathering, attendees are advised to go online to https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjlm_idML89Gb4LuxPX4QrzFlraDty79D-jhEim8Jihvt6iQ/viewform?fbclid=IwY2xjawP8WRJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF1OUtNTjFpbVhnWXp5eEIwc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHiR7iz1y7VXN74m38-5ojvomrq3v5Ct1_lzGwx8IqeG8UQoEcWfV8M3IESMc_aem_6tDz1LZppyZKXhqZWtrIuw