SALT LAKE CITY — A majority of Utahns would like to see Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, named to the U.S. Supreme Court by President-elect Donald Trump, according to poll results released Wednesday.

The poll for UtahPolicy.com found that 59 percent of Utahns support Lee becoming a U.S. Supreme Court justice, while just under a third, 31 percent, were opposed, and 11 percent didn't know how they feel about him joining the high court.

The poll was conducted by Dan Jones & Associates for the online political news source of 614 registered Utah voters Dec. 8-12. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.95 percent.

Lee was on a Trump list of possible Supreme Court nominees issued in September and had a meeting with the president-elect in New York City last month despite not having endorsed him.

But the Utah Republican may have another choice in mind for the high court — his brother, Utah Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Tom Lee, whose name appeared on an earlier list of potential picks released by Trump.

The senator's communications director, Conn Carroll, cited Lee's re-election with more than 70 percent of the vote and said the support in the poll "is a huge honor as well, but Sen. Lee would also love to confirm his brother to the court."

When the senator met with Trump in New York City last month, the Supreme Court was discussed, Carroll said, but "not in the context of Sen. Lee as an option." Instead, he said, the president-elect asked Lee about his opinion of others.

Lee said in a statement when his name first surfaced that he appreciated being considered but that he was "focused on my job in the Senate where I'm in a good position to defend the Constitution by fighting against government overreach."

There has been a vacancy on the high court since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. President Barack Obama's mid-March nomination of U.S. Appeals Judge Merrick Garland was blocked by Senate Republicans.

Trump is not expected to announce his nominee until after he is inaugurated on Jan. 20, but he reportedly has told conservatives he will stick to the 21 candidates he came up with before the election.

Sutherland Institute President Boyd Matheson said naming Lee or his brother would reassure Utah voters who reluctantly backed Trump at the ballot box because they were concerned about the balance of power on the Supreme Court.

"That vote that they cast, many of them with their noses held, they want that vote to matter," said Matheson, Lee's former chief of staff. "It would give a lot of people a lot of comfort, in addition to validating their vote."

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Trump, who won Utah with 45.5 percent of the vote, his smallest margin of victory, acknowledged "tremendous problems" in a state where concerns were raised about his stands on issues, particularly immigration, as well as his treatment of women.

Lee was among the Utah political leaders who never endorsed Trump. After a videotape surfaced in October of Trump talking about making sexual advances toward women, Lee urged him in a Facebook post to step down as a candidate.

Matheson said many conservative Utahns look to the Lees as "the keepers of the Constitution," a legacy that started with father Rex Lee, who served as President Ronald Reagan's solicitor general and then president of BYU.

Mike Lee, who served as general counsel to then-Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito twice, first when Alito was a U.S. Court of Appeals judge and later at the high court.

University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said Lee's "robustly conservative" politics and relative youth at age 45 are pluses for him, but he may be seen as a risk because he has no history of issuing judicial opinions.

"My guess is Sen. Lee would not be the person at the top of the list," Burbank said. "Just moving from the Senate to the Supreme Court is not a very common path. Usually, you want someone with experience as a judge." Email: lroche@ksl.com Twitter: DNewsPolitics

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