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SALT LAKE CITY — Just over half of Utahns view President Donald Trump unfavorably, a slight decline in popularity since March, according to a new UtahPolicy.com poll released Tuesday.
Trump's favorability rating among Utahns dropped 2 points in the months since the last poll, to 45 percent. Just 16 percent said they have a "very favorable" opinion of the president, compared with 20 percent in March.
Although Utah is one of the most Republican states in the nation, Trump won in 2016 with less than a majority of the vote, 45.5 percent. Republicans in the new poll strongly support him, however, with 70 percent saying they see him favorably.
UtahPolicy.com publisher LaVarr Webb, who writes a column for the Deseret News, said he believes Utahns are responding to the president's personality, not his policies, and that he hasn't made promised progress.
"I think Utahns, for the most part, would support his policy positions. But his incessant tweeting and just his narcissistic personality get in the way," Webb said. "In the campaign, people understood that's the way he was, but they had hopes he would shake Washington up."
Trump is also being hurt by the ongoing investigations into allegations there was collusion between his campaign and Russia in the foreign government's interference with the 2016 election, Webb said.
Related:
54% of Utahns disapprove of Trump's job performance, poll shows
Utahns have not embraced President Donald Trump in his first four months of office, a new UtahPolicy.com poll shows.The poll was conducted May 31-June 5 of 607 registered Utah voters by Dan Jones & Associates for the online political news source and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.98 percent.
Before the Utah GOP presidential caucus in March 2016, polls showed Utahns would prefer then-Democratic presidential candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic socialist, over Trump.
A number of Republican leaders were reluctant to back Trump, whose bombastic style, and later his vulgar statements about making advances toward women in a leaked 2005 tape, turned off the state's voters.
Trump is still doing a little better in Utah than he is in national polling. The most recent average of recent polls calculated by RealClear Politics showed 54.6 percent of Americans gave the president an unfavorable rating.
