Mr. McMullin has almost no shot at winning the presidency. He is on only 11 state ballots and is bumping along the bottom of national polls — when pollsters even include his name in surveys. Because of state ballot deadlines, his recently named running mate, Mindy Finn, who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, will not even be listed on those ballots.
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But Mr. McMullin might have a history-making moment in his reach. Growing discomfort with Mr. Trump among Mormon voters is offering the Provo-born graduate of Brigham Young University a tantalizing opportunity to capture Utah’s six electoral votes. No candidate outside a major party has won a state since George Wallace in 1968, and Democrats are also intensifying their efforts as the race here tightens.
Though Mr. McMullin’s support is growing, he still lags behind Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton. A Monmouth University poll of likely Utah voters released on Thursday showed Mr. Trump ahead, with 34 percent of support to Mrs. Clinton’s 28 percent. Mr. McMullin was third, with 20 percent of voters.
Another survey, conducted this week by a Republican pollster, showed the three in a closer race and set off a blitz of news media interest in Mr. McMullin. The campaign seized on it to try to raise its profile here and in the roughly 30 other states where he is a write-in candidate.
“As Trump collapses, as Clinton continues to have troubles with scandals, those voters are coming in our direction,” said Joel Searby, the campaign’s chief strategist.
Mr. McMullin is happy to unload on Mr. Trump, calling him a con man and autocrat who promotes racial tensions, degrades women and disregards the Constitution and basic American ideas about fairness and compassion. He said he was “deeply disappointed” in Republicans like Senator Marco Rubio — whom he supported in the primary — for continuing to back Mr. Trump.
As he spoke in Logan on Wednesday evening, Mr. McMullin presented himself as the balm to all that — the only “true conservative” running for president.
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He threaded his family’s story into Utah’s, saying the McMullins had joined the Mormon Church in the 1800s and were among the pioneers who crossed the Plains to settle here. A graduate of the Wharton School, which he attended after Brigham Young, he worked in war zones for the C.I.A., he said, served as a Republican congressional adviser and was with Goldman Sachs for about a year and a half.
Mr. McMullin acknowledged his campaign’s long odds. Mrs. Clinton’s recent rise in many polls has dimmed his quintuple-bank-shot path to victory, which hinges on Congress deciding the election if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes.
He called for a “new conservative movement,” and was applauded when he criticized Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server and called for cutting federal regulations, supporting charter schools and restoring power to the states.
But the crowd also cheered when he called for criminal justice reform. And they gave him a thundering ovation when he criticized Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims by saying, “We don’t have to insult Muslims around the world and apply religious tests that are repugnant to the United States.”
After attending the rally, Ms. Shapiro gave it some thought and decided that Mr. McMullin was her candidate. “I think he could do great,” she said. But the campaign was having a harder time winning over some other voters.
Tanya Peters, a lawyer who lives in the Salt Lake City suburb South Jordan, is the kind of voter who could have gone for Mr. McMullin: a 42-year-old suburban Republican with roots in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who said she “clearly” was not going to vote for Mr. Trump.
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In a telephone interview, Ms. Peters said she believed that Mr. McMullin was a “good guy,” but she said he had never been vetted and was concerned that he has never held elected office. Others echoed her skepticism, wondering whether the presidential bid was a way for Mr. McMullin to try to vault to another elected office in Utah. Ultimately, Ms. Peters decided that despite her misgivings, she will vote for Mrs. Clinton.
Utah’s Republican voters and politicians were among those wariest about Mr. Trump as he sought the Republican nomination, and were also among the first to disavow him and call for him to step aside after accusations surfaced over the last week that he had forced himself on women.
They have not, however, surged to Mr. McMullin’s side. Lt. Gov. Spencer J. Cox, a longstanding Trump critic who is running for re-election this year, said he was impressed with Mr. McMullin’s conservative message. He called him a “good person with a solid background” — praise that many here do not extend to Mr. Trump.
But Mr. Cox said he was still making up his mind, and suggested that Mr. McMullin’s lack of elected experience was giving some voters pause.
The decision was easier for Miles Gillette, 28, who works for a car dealership in Logan. When his wife shared the “Letter to America” Mr. McMullin wrote to declare his candidacy and praise American values, Mr. Gillette stayed up till 3 a.m. reading about him, he says. He has chatted with the candidate, and believes in him.
“I’d rather take a long shot,” Mr. Gillette said, “than sell my morals.”
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the historic significance of a possible win by Evan McMullin in Utah. As the article correctly noted, it would be the first time that a third-party candidate won a state since 1968 when George Wallace captured five states — but not Utah. (Richard M. Nixon won Utah that year.)
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