> Absolutely no surprise to me that Utah is relatively socialist internally while being on the extreme right externally.
Utah is also heavily Mormon, which complicates things. Mormons have a lot of beliefs that sound fairly socialist when you describe them in practice, except that they believe the church should be the administrator of those policies.
Mormons also heavily oppose abortion, which makes them a nearly single-issue voting bloc, making Utah deep red in a purely partisan sense.
If somehow abortion were a non-issue - like, overnight, everyone somehow magically forgot abortion even existed - it's not hard to imagine Mormons being one of the least conservative Christian denominations.
(Yes, I'm aware that other Christians don't consider the LDS to be Christians, but that's beside the point)