And why was Utah further left than Idaho [the reason Arizona was farther right than Utah was obviously the native-son effect] that year?
I’m not sure – it’s plausible but very uncertain that many Mormons were suspicious of Goldwater’s wife Peggy’s association with Planned Parenthood and did not desire a foundress of Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona as First Lady.
It’s also possible and more likely that Utah residents feared Goldwater would privatize Utah’s water infrastructure and potentially increase cost, something less critical with the more reliable runoff of the Columbia Basin. The 1960 to 1964 Utah swings by county do suggest this had some impact in southern Utah counties that even then were normally 70 percent Republican – especially as Goldwater might have been better known personally there than further north – but most of those counties were too small for even a 14 percent swing to have much statewide effect.
