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Mormon Candidate Spelling Bad News for Trump in Utah

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is getting some unwelcome news out in Utah.

The state is normally a lock for Republican candidates, but this year the heavily Mormon state is not throwing its full support behind Trump.

A majority of Utah voters appear to favor a third party candidate named Evan McMullin, a Mormon businessman and former CIA agent.

Voters in other states likely haven't heard of him, but a new poll from Emerson College puts him in the lead in Utah.

CNBC reports that Emerson poll gives McMullin 31 percent of the vote, while Trump gets 27 percent and Clinton has 24 percent.

"One of the most remarkable aspects of this election, at least so far, has been Donald Trump's weakness in quite a number of usually deep red states," said professor Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

"There can be no better example than Utah and everybody knows why. The LDS church is very anti-Trump," he said.

The last time a Republican lost Utah was in 1964.

"It goes beyond Utah though," Sabato noted. "The fact that Arizona could become competitive and it is very competitive - we even think it may be leaning slightly to Clinton at this point."

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