In the highly competitive political battleground that is Salt Lake County, liberals control the bigger cities in the north and conservatives dominate the once-rural south.
Over the years, these partisan extremes have grown only more entrenched, while the cities in the middle are, well, in the middle. Places such as Murray and Taylorsville are more moderate and therefore more unpredictable, backing Republicans in some high profile races and Democrats in others.
The Salt Lake Tribune took the election results from the past three presidential cycles and ranked each city on a liberal-to-conservative scale, focusing on the races for president, Congress and governor.
Salt Lake City has consistently ranked as the county's most liberal city with more than 60 percent of votes going to Democrats. Its mirror opposite is small Bluffdale on the Utah County border, where 77 percent of votes went to the top Republicans in 2008.
But the big change may be the east-west political rift, instead of the north-to-south divide.
Since 2000, the county's west side, from West Valley City all the way south to Riverton, Herriman and South Jordan, has become increasingly conservative. Meanwhile, traditional Republican powers, such as Sandy and Draper on the east bench, have become more moderate.
Former Utah Republican Party Director Jeff Hartley chalks it up to the housing boom. Young Mormon families who tend to vote Republican have left east-side cities, such as Holladay and Sandy, to buy starter homes in new western subdivisions. At the same time, transplants from places like California snatch up the higher-priced real estate on the east side, and they are not as uniformly conservative.
These shifting populations bring with them a range of demographic changes such as educational attainment and religion, said Joe Hatch, chairman-in-waiting of the Salt Lake County Council.
More non-Mormons and inactive LDS members live in Salt Lake City and along the east bench than other areas of the county, and they are more willing to consider a Democrat, he said. The most active Mormon communities are in the heart of that southwestern cluster of Republican cities, such as West Jordan and Herriman.
"The county is becoming more and more mixed, more and more diverse and more and more educated, and all of those trends help the Democratic Party," said Hatch, a former county Democratic chairman.
In November's election, Democrats gained a 5-to-4 majority on the County Council for the first time since the council's creation in 2000, and popular Democratic Mayor Peter Corroon won in a landslide. U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, a Democrat, claimed more than 71 percent of the vote in the Salt Lake County cities that fall within his district.
And for the first time in decades in Salt Lake County, the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, narrowly outpolled the Republican, John McCain.
But even in the midst of these Democratic victories, Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. swept every city in the county -- a county he lost four years ago. Hatch said Huntsman's big gains are in part because of a "flawed" Democratic challenger who wasn't well-versed in running for office. But he also said Huntsman, like Matheson, has a certain quality that Salt Lake County voters like -- he isn't an ideologue.
Huntsman has been willing to challenge his own party on climate change and education funding. He is also supporting the elimination of rules that require private club membership for bars, which isn't popular among many Republicans.
Similarly, Matheson has riled some Democrats by supporting such things as energy development and the war in Iraq.
"In Huntsman's case, there's probably a lot of very conservative Republicans who don't like him," Hatch said. "With Matheson, I can tell you a lot of very liberal Democrats don't like him."
But they both have crossover appeal, leading to the landslide victories in Salt Lake County.
Republican lobbyist LaVarr Webb said the county is full of "ticket splitters" who seek out problem solvers.
"I think politicians from either party can still win, but they have to be good and they have to be practical," he said.
In explaining his own increased success among voters, Huntsman said: "They get to understand you after four years and that can either hurt you or help you. We like to think in our case it helped us."
Hatch said Huntsman's big win and Obama's little win show that the state's most populous county isn't Republican red or Democratic blue; it "is really a purple county."
"What that means is elections are always competitive. It means almost always good candidates are willing to run, and those who are elected can't take their seats for granted."
