Utah Priorities Project

Priority #16: Transportation and Traffic

Written by: Mallory Bateman

This post continues our blog series on concerns that many Utah voters expressed in our survey that didn’t make the cut for our top ten list. Transportation and traffic ranked 16th in this year’s Utah Priorities Project, a similar to the 2010 and 2012 surveys. The highest ranking transportation and traffic has garnered was 9th place in 2008. This year, 49% of respondents gave this topic a 4 or a 5 on a 5-point scale., … Continued

Utah Thrives — Crime

Written by: Dan Bammes

Utah voters rated crime as the #7 issue of concern in this year’s Utah Priorities Project. A research brief from Utah Foundation shows that rates for most crime have been going down both in Utah and across the nation. But there’s serious concern about the way police officers relate to the communities they serve – and about the large numbers of offenders incarcerated in both prisons and local jails. In this edition of Utah Thrives, … Continued

Priority #18: Marijuana Laws

Written by: Mallory Bateman

This post continues our blog series on concerns that many Utah voters expressed in our survey that didn’t make the cut for our top ten list. This year, marijuana laws made a first-time appearance in the Utah Priorities Project survey, coming in at 18th place. Its appearance was likely due to several bills touching on marijuana being proposed in the Utah legislature, as well as seeing the positive fiscal impact on neighboring Colorado after their legalization of … Continued

Utah Thrives — Haven Barlow Looks Back

Written by: Dan Bammes

Partisan politics – the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between political leaders that seem to characterize all our public discourse – has been a significant concern for voters the last two times Utah Foundation has conducted the Utah Priorities Project. Voters placed it at Number 8 on the top ten list in 2012 and put it again in 8th place in 2016. Yet it wasn’t so long ago that cooperation between officeholders in Utah’s legislature and elsewhere … Continued

Utah Thrives — Addressing Homelessness

Written by: Dan Bammes

Homelessness and poverty rank 9th on the 2016 Utah Priorities Project top ten list, based on a survey of voters conducted earlier this year. Utah Foundation’s research brief issued July 6th, 2016 shows, among other important facts, that domestic violence is an important contributor to homelessness, involved in 21% of the cases and nearly as significant a cause as substance abuse and mental illness. In this edition of Utah Thrives, Dan Bammes speaks with Shauna … Continued

The Other Priorities: Priority #21 Liquor Laws

Written by: Christopher Collard

While Utah Foundation’s Utah Priorities Project highlights the top ten most important issues to Utahns, there are just as many priorities that did not make the list. These lesser priorities, while not highlighted through most of our reporting process, are still important to many Utahns. These other concerns and associated survey data will be briefly covered in a series of blog posts and will be released roughly once every other week leading up to the … Continued

Utahns Don’t Like Either Presumptive Candidate

Written by: Christopher Collard

As the field of presidential candidates among major parties has dwindled from 23 to 3 over the past 9 months, the apparent nominees have become clear, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately for Utah, its preferred nominees, Ted Cruz among Republicans and Bernie Sanders among Democrats, do not appear to be likely candidates (although who can say how this will all really play out in the end). As part of a small survey following up … Continued

Utah Priorities Project: Explaining the Candidate Survey

Written by: Dan Bammes

Utah Foundation Research Analyst Christopher Collard joined KSL’s Doug Wright on Wednesday, April 6th to talk about the Utah Priorities Project candidate survey. This second report in the 2016 Utah Priorities Project looks at the answers given by seven candidates for governor to a set of questions about issues of concern to Utah voters. The questions are essentially the same as those posed to voters in the first report, which identified the top ten issues … Continued