SALT LAKE CITY – Utah Democrats are predicting a Blue Wave in the upcoming midterm elections and are backing up their claims of a significant voter shift in their favor with recent voter registration figures.
“The vibes are really strong,” said Jade Velazques, the executive director of the Utah Democratic Party, in April. “And we have the metrics to back them up.”
Statewide, the number of active, registered Democratic voters is up in terms of real numbers. As of April 7, the Democrats’ headcount was up by more than 4,500 voters, while the Republican ranks of voters declined by more than 800.
Much of that change is focused in Salt Lake County, where Democrats finally have a chance to send a member of their party to Congress for the first time since 2021.
After successfully battling legislative gerrymandering in court for years, voter registrations are naturally shifting in the new left-leaning court-ordered enclave in Salt Lake County.
Lanny Chapman, the Salt Lake County Clerk, reports that registered Democratic voters jumped from 130,281 in 2025 to 133,438 in 2026, representing growth of about 2.4 percent. In the same period, Republican voters there declined by 2,345, nearly 1 percent.
Of course, Chapman acknowledges that everything is relative. Even in Salt Lake County, Republican voters still outnumber Democrats. As of April, the GOP had more that 235,000 registered voters there compared to the Democrats’ 133,000.
That’s true statewide as well. Statistics provided by the office of Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson in April indicate that registered, active Republican voters outnumber Democratic voters by a comfortable nearly four-to-one margin (920,913 GOP voters compared to 245,714 voters registered as Democrats).
But Utah Democrats still claim to see light at the end of the tunnel.
“Five of the top 20 counties in the nation that have moved most toward the Democratic Party are right here in Utah,” according to a Facebook post by the Utah Democratic Party on the eve of their state nominating convention in April.
Those Utah counties allegedly include Salt Lake (with a 30.6 percent shift), Utah (38.8 percent), Davis (37.1 percent), Wasatch (25 percent) and Cache (33.7 percent)
“The game has changed and nothing is off-limits,” that post crowed.
But Cache County Clerk Bryson Behm doesn’t share the optimistic view of state and local Democrats.
“We’re not seeing growth in the Democratic registration percentage,” according to Behm, who says that the proportion of registered Democrats here has stayed fairly steady at around 10 percent of total voters.
But Behm acknowledges that Democratic candidates consistently perform higher than their registration share in Cache County.
For example, in 2020, Democratic candidates received about 28.5 percent of the Cache County vote, although only 10.17 percent of those voters were registered Democrats. The same pattern emerged with slight variations in 2024, when Democratic candidates won about 30.5 percent of the local vote, with only about 9.85 of those ballots coming from registered Democrats.
“Those numbers suggest a possible crossover with unaffiliated voters or those from other parties,” Behm admits. “But not a major shift in party alignment.”
Here in Cache County, Republicans can count on more than 40,000 loyal GOP voters, compared to slightly more than 6,500 for Democrats. Another 23,000 voters report being unaffiliated or members of the Independent American, Libertarian, Constitution, Utah Forward or Green parties.
At state level, the active voter headcounts are 920,912 for Republicans, 245,714 for Democrats and another more than 600,000 voters leaning unaffiliated or as members of the Utah Forward, Independent American, Libertarian, Green or Constitution parties.