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SALT LAKE CITY — As Interstate 15 slices through the Rocky Mountains near Salt Lake City, there sits a billboard posted by an enterprising real estate agent.

It features caricatures of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton with the tagline, “Moving to Canada? We’ll sell your house!”

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A mention of either major party candidate in this majority-Mormon and deeply conservative state is likely to elicit a groan, or a shake of the head.

That antipathy for both candidates is unparalleled elsewhere in the U.S., and has propelled Utah into a three-way race, turning a reliably Republican stronghold into an unlikely swing state.

“If Mormons are not the exact opposite of Trump, they would at least aspire to be,” says Quin Monson, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University, citing Trump’s 73-per-cent disapproval rate among Mormons.

Mormons are a historically persecuted minority for whom rhetoric about banning Muslims and deporting Mexicans rings all too familiar, Monson explains.