Utah’s 3rd congressional district
The nation’s youngest congressional district is Utah’s 3rd Congressional District. The 3rd starts in the southern suburbs of Salt Lake City, where almost all of its population lives, but then zigzags down through the dry, sandblasted terrain of the state’s southeastern quarter. Parts of the district … Monument Valley, as well as Arches and Canyonlands National Parks … with their buttes and tall cliffs, are the visual embodiment of the desert Southwest, forming the backdrop for everything from John Ford’s westerns to Coyote and Road Runner cartoons.
The place that really typifies day-to-day life in the 3rd district isn’t the desert, though, but rather the city of Provo. At the center of Provo is Brigham Young University, the main university associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. BYU, in fact, is the largest religious university in the United States, with nearly 30,000 students, almost all of whom are Mormon. While Provo (which is 40 miles south of Salt Lake City) is large enough to stand on its own as a city, it’s close enough to SLC that it also serves as something of an exurb, with many people not associated with the university commuting northward. The vast majority of the “townies,” as well, are Mormon; while the Census Bureau doesn’t ask about religion, the Association of Religion Data Archives, which keeps track of congregation data, puts the total Mormon population of Utah County (the county where Provo is located) at 457,999, or 89 percent of the population.
Studies have shown that Mormons are likelier to marry and have children than members of other faiths; a 2015 Pew Research study indicates that the average number of children born to Mormons is 3.4, compared with 2.2 for all American adults. When you combine that higher birth rate (meaning more children as a percentage of the overall population) with the presence of a large university, you have all the ingredients for the nation’s youngest district. Utah’s 3rd has the lowest median age of any district: 28.4 years.
Interestingly, the 3rd also tops two other “Most District” categories, ones you probably wouldn’t have thought of: it’s the district with the highest percentage of persons with Danish ancestry (5.8 percent), and of persons with English ancestry (27.5 percent). Again, that’s largely a factor of this being the nation’s most Mormon district: the English and Danes were the two groups of foreigners most heavily recruited by the LDS to come to Utah in the 19th century. (In addition, many Mormons can trace their roots back to the nation’s first waves of Yankee settlers in the colonial era. For instance, prominent 17th-century pastor John Leavitt is the ancestor of two different recent Utah governors, Mike Leavitt and Jon Huntsman.)
The 3rd’s heavily Mormon heritage manifests itself in one other way: it’s one of the nation’s most heavily Republican districts. Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by a 78 to 20 margin in 2012; while John McCain didn’t have Romney’s favorite son status, he still won 68 to 30 in 2008. The 3rd has been represented since 2008 by Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, an up-and-comer who’s often talked about as a Senate replacement when Orrin Hatch retires, but who is currently the chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. If and when Chaffetz seeks a promotion, given how the red the district is, it’ll probably remain in Republican hands.
“The Most District” is an ongoing series devoted to highlighting congressional district superlatives around the nation. Click here for all posts in this series.
