A new poll released Wednesday by Utah-based Y2 Analytics found Evan McMullin with 22 percent support across the state. | Getty Trump’s lurid tape just made Evan McMullin relevant For the first time, the 'independent conservative' candidate has a chance to make a mark in 2016.

Long the thought that came after the afterthought of the 2016 presidential campaign, independent conservative Evan McMullin now has a chance to make his mark in the race — thanks in large part to a leaked tape of Donald Trump talking about sexual assault.

Trump’s lewd tape appears to be cutting into his standing among social conservatives, nowhere more so than in Utah, where the Mormon faith holds sway and tolerance for the latest revelation of Trump’s lasciviousness has pushed his already strained relationship with state Republicans past the breaking point. That, combined with a broad rejection of Hillary Clinton, is good news for McMullin.


McMullin, a former Capitol Hill and CIA staffer who’s running a barebones campaign as a conservative alternative, not only grew up in Utah, he has made the state the focus of his campaign.

It’s paying off. While McMullin is almost unknown nationally and on the ballot in only 11 states, a new poll released Wednesday by Utah-based Y2 Analytics found McMullin with 22 percent support across the state. That’s just behind Trump and Clinton, who were tied at 26 percent, and ahead of Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson’s 14 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s 1 percent. (Trump’s campaign did not return a request for comment on the poll results.)

It’s just one poll, but it’s enough for Utah’s political insiders to take notice.

“I’ll make a prediction: He’s going to win the state,” said Dave Hansen, a political adviser to Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), on Wednesday. “I think people don’t want Trump and they don’t like Clinton out here, and he is kind of the unknown, but people like him. He’s a safe place to go to cast their ballot.”

Hansen’s comments mark how far McMullin has come from about a month ago. At the time, McMullin was polling at 12 percent in a Salt Lake Tribune/Dan Jones & Associates poll, one of the few surveys to register McMullin in the state.

Back then, Hansen was far less bullish on McMullin. “I just think as it gets closer to the election, barring something catastrophic happening with Trump — statements or anything coming out — I think Trump's probably going to win the state and he'll win with a fairly good margin,” Hansen said in September.

That “anything” turned out to be a 2005 video recording in which Trump talks about his ability to make unwelcome advances on women and to “grab them by the pussy.”

Among top state Republicans, the condemnation was swift. Mitt Romney tweeted “hitting on married women? Condoning assault? Such vile degradations demean our wives and daughters and corrupt America's face to the world.”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz dropped his support, announcing in a statement, “I’m out.” Love released a similar statement, saying, “I cannot vote for him.” Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman called for Trump to drop out of the race. Gov. Gary Herbert and Sen. Mike Lee both made the same argument. Herbert had previously supported Trump, while Lee had not endorsed the Republican nominee. Meanwhile, Sen. Orrin Hatch, Attorney General Sean Reyes, and Rep. Rob Bishop denounced Trump’s comments in the “Access Hollywood” video but did not withdraw their endorsements.

McMullin’s chances of becoming president remain where they were before Trump’s tape: virtually zero. But now he does have a chance to make a meaningful impact in the race — potentially winning a state, or, at the very least, hurting Trump in a state that is unexpectedly in play.

For now, though, McMullin must still close a gap to win Utah. His last Federal Election Commission filing showed his campaign with just $44,000 cash on hand. He still trails both major party candidates, and he’s benefiting from a disastrous stretch of foreign policy missteps by Johnson, the Libertarian. Trump could right the ship or Republicans could again close ranks behind him; Johnson could pass a few geography lessons and get back on track; or Clinton could surge forward.

But this is McMullin’s moment, and his team is hoping to consolidate state GOP support.

“We’re talking to pretty much all of the key leaders in Utah,” McMullin campaign chief strategist Joel Searby said. “We have had direct communication with every leader in Utah who has either not supported Trump previously or has since unendorsed Trump. Every single one.”

McMullin hasn’t yet been endorsed by any of those elected Utah Republicans, but multiple strategists and operatives in the state said that they could come out in support of the conservative long shot in the coming days.

The next few days will be crucial for McMullin, said Boyd Matheson, former chief of staff to Lee.

“It’s still dependent on this, McMullin will have to come out with something that he is for,” said Matheson. “He can’t just say it’s time for new leadership or for the next generation of leadership. That won’t get him across the finish line. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, it just has to be here’s the principles and here’s the policies that come with it, so Utahans can see there’s substance behind this thing. And I think he’s got about a five-day window in that with this new poll coming out.”

Searby and the rest of McMullin’s team have made sure to highlight the poll to top Republicans both inside and outside the state. On Tuesday night, he called Stuart Stevens, who was chief strategist on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, to tell him the Y2 poll would be coming out on Wednesday.

“I was in a car, and he called to tell me about this poll that was going to come out,” Stevens recalled. He just heard rumors of it and he had heard that Evan was going to be at 18. In fact he’s at 22, right?”

Stevens said Searby wasn’t looking to bring him into the campaign but rather wanted to make sure the former Romney adviser knew about the poll.

According to a top GOP official with knowledge of the interaction, Mitt Romney is still monitoring McMullin’s progress as a candidate, although it’s unclear if he could support the long shot.

“I think if anything, the momentum is with McMullin to move ahead,” said Quin Monson, who conducted the Y2 poll. “It’s a powerful combination of Trump basically setting himself on fire, most of the Utah Republican congressional delegation and statewide office holders abandoning ship, some of them calling on him to resign or just step down, and then one of the statewide newspapers, the LDS-church owned Deseret News, sending out an op-ed that hit social media on Saturday and was printed on Sunday that basically echoed everything else.”