2017-08-015: UTAH-03 special partisan primary day

This information could be helpful:

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G17/UT#H03_

Today, there are 8 candidates on the ballot, but the only party-primary that has more than one challenger is the GOP primary. The D, L, IA and United Utah primaries are unopposed.

On the R-ballot today:

Provo Mayor John Curtis (who raised the largest fundchest)
Tanner Ainge
Christopher Herrod

In the case of United Utah's candidate, ballot access is officially "still pending", so I have no idea what kind of help that is to a UU candidate on primary day...

Utah's 3rd congressional district was created after the 1980 census and first had a congressional election in 1982. Of the four representatives elected to represent this CD, 3 are Republican, 1 is a Democrat (1991-1997). UT-03 is considered an overwhelmingly Republican CD, one of the most Conservative in the land. It has a Cook PVI-rating of: R+25.

In Jason Chaffetz's succesful re-election of 2016, he won this CD by +47%.

No one is even remotely expecting this CD to be competitive in the Fall General (special) election, but I will be interested to see how the margins play out.

Results sites:

AP
Utah Elections Office

I will report the semi-final stats tomorrow.

-Stat

 

08-015????

 

The date is 8-15-17 as the OP states "After previously stating that he would not run for re-election, Jason Chaffetz announced on May 19 that he was resigning his seat in the House, effective June 30.[1] A special election was called to replace him with a filing period opening on May 19 and closing by June 30, an expected primary date of August 15, and an election day of November 7"
There IS a special election today.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah's_3rd_congressional_district_special_election,_2017

 

I see that mr statistician's date error was over your head.

No such date as 08-015.

 

Was your reply meant for me? If so I would say I used common sense and figured what the poster meant. I realize there is no date 8-015, Could it be a typo? Sorry if I'm not a nit picker.

 

Yes, I figured out what he meant, too. If he didn't pretend to be a statistical expert, I'd have ignored it as well. Second thread with an incorrectly formatted date was just too much to ignore. I am a nitpicker.

 

To each his own. Nuff said.

 

@gc17

The use of year (four digits), month (two digits) and day (three digits) is commonplace and accepted in Europe. It is also often used in military documentation. People who want to nitpick over something this small that everyone understands and then wants to muddle up a thread with such junk - must have a very small heart and an even smaller brain. The use of 3 digits for the day position is to clear up any misunderstanding of which column is for month and which is for day. I have been using this format in PF now for almost 2 years.

But.... whoever wrote this silly junk is on my ignore list. Gee, I wonder why..... so, ignore the wild and wooly person behind the curtain.

 

And the results are in:




Provo Mayor John Curtis won the primary, by roughly +10 (AP says +10, it's actually +9.43). He will face off against Democrat Kathie Allen (a doctor) in the fall and is, according to conventional wisdom, favored to win.

BTW, more votes were cast in the 2017 GOP special primary than were cast in 2016. At current, 64,312 votes were tallied (this figure may change by the time the final canvass comes out). In 2016, 60,361 votes were cast in the GOP CD-03 primary.

 

Just for fun: in the posting before I indicated that Republican nominee John Curtis is favored to win in the Fall. Here is some data to show what I mean.

First, here is what CD-03 looks like:



Second, here are the voter registration statistics for Utah, as of just 2 days ago:

https://elections.utah.gov/party-and-status

Here a screenshot of the current numbers:




In terms of percentages, that works out to:

R: 46.56%
Unafilliated: 39.08%
D: 11.49%
others: 2.87%

R-D margin (VR): R+ 35.07%
In Utah, the Rs have a 4-to-1 VR advantage over the Ds.
That is a huge deficit for any Democrat to have to overcome.

Now, that is a statewide statistic, but at the website, there are clickable maps where you can scroll over each county and see what the stats are. For instance, in San Juan County (most southeasterly county in Utah, completely within UT-03), the Democratic party has it's highest percentage of VR for CD-03: 19%. That's it. In Grand County directly to the North and on the border to Colorado, it's 15.9% for the Democratic party. But just one county to the left (also within CD-03), Emery County it's only 5.1% and so on and so on. Overall, the Democratic Party has the most strength in Summit County (19.3%). Scroll over the map to see for yourself where party (and unafilliated) strength is in the great state of Utah.

Publishing VR in Utah is a relatively new phenomenon. The state just started doing this two years ago, in 2015 and I must say, they have an excellent way of presenting their data.

 

That is interesting information. Thanks for posting it. Anything is possible so we will have to wait and see what happens but I would be very surprised if a Democrat won this election.

 

Thank God for Utah

I wish the rest of America was as Christian and conservative as they are

 

ISO 8601 ORDINAL DATES use a 3 digit day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

It is possible that software used for statistical purposes uses the Ordinal Date for calculations and then does not truncate the leading zero when converting back to YYYY-MM-DD format.

That has nothing to do with the poster and everything to do with the coding.

 

I as well, but I do think that the margin may be interesting to watch. Could be very telling.
Remember, this state was so disillusioned with then-candidate Trump that in more than one poll (primary season), then-candidate Bernie Sanders was beating him by a large margin. In UTAH! Due to the very unorthodox nature of the Trump presidency, every special election will be closely watched, also especially the two upcoming gubernatorial elections (NJ, VA).

 

Sounds like an opportunity for the Dem candidate to embrace the Sanders doctrine as a means to tip the scales in her favor. If she can get Bernie come and campaign for her she might even be able to win.

Don't know if she will do it but it just makes sense to me given how opposed the UT electorate was towards the BLOTUS. Painting her opponent as a Trumpista will be another tactic.

SInce I don't know anything about either candidate I am just speculating but this is a district where the Dems could safely experiment with this strategy and lose nothing by trying it.

 

I read a lot of wishful thinking in that post

Straight laced Utah may not approve on trump and his former liberal/progressive anything goes sexual lifestyle

But I don't think they are ready to embrace bernie sanders and socialism either

 

Your BLOTUS only managed a mere 45% in UT last November.

That support has probably declined since then.

The good citizens of Utah are definitely open to alternatives and this would be an opportunity to find out where they stand. If the race comes in under 7 points following the Sanders doctrine it would signal the direction for 2018 regardless as to the actual outcome.

 

I just siad that Christians in utah may not like trump based on his personal history

But politically they are still conservatives

 

Actually, not as much wishful thinking as you may think.

Utah, presidential statistics going back to 1956:


Source.


That's the second leanest winning margin for a Republican in this state since 1968. Clinton's 27.17% of the statewide popular vote in 2016, although a dismal statistic, is still better than the Dem bottom line in: 2012, 2006, 2000, 1992, 1984 and 1980. The 21.31% for Independent candidate Evan McMullin showed real, true dissatisfaction with Trump, but not just on moral issues. In Utah polling, feelings about health care also changed radically in 2016. And the Mormons, who suffered persecution at the hands of Democrats more than 100 years ago, when the Democratic Party was the Conservative Party of the USA and the Republican Party was the far more Liberal of the two, are starting to realize that the parties really did, in many ways, switch sides in the 1960s.

And, for the second time since 1964, a Democratic nominee won Salt Lake County and Summit Counties, as did Obama in '08, and just barely lost Grand County -in CD-03, btw-, which Obama just barely won in that same year.

So, just as Democrats should not assume that erstwhile partisan bastians like,say, Wisconsin and Michigan, stay in their column, Republicans would be well advised to consider the same about a number of their bastions, including the SW of the nation: Arizona and Utah but also, in the future, Montana, Kansas and Nebraska.

 

Two more details about the Utah race have appeared that I was not aware of:

1.) John Curtis, currently the mayor of Provo and now the Rebublican nominee for the CD-03 special election in November, was NOT the party favorite over Christopher Herrod and Tanner Ainger. He got on the primary ballot via petition, something the UT-GOP apparently does not like. Curtis is considered not as hard right as the other two. In fact, the Republicans held two endorsement conventions, by which Chris Herrod was chosen. Source.

2.) Though denied ballot access for the Fall, the Green Party of Utah has put up a candidate for write-in, and the state of Utah has agreed to count the write-in votes. This is a break with former policy in Utah. The Green Party candidate's name is Brendan Phillips. So, his smaller percentage of the vote will be counted. Source

-Stat

 

The green party will hurt the democrat candidate in a close election

 

I concur with your assessment. I really doubt that this will be a close election, if electoral history is our guide and trends continue.
That being said, if the race goes under +20 for the GOP nominee, I would say that something is definitely afoot in Utah, for this is +50% terrority for the GOP since about 20 years.

I do want to point out that the correct grammar is "Democratic candidate" and not "democrat candidate". Use of "democrat" in this form grammatically is a proven perjorative used by right-wingers to asperse Democrats.

Here most, if not all of the correct grammatical forms:

He/she is a Democrat
The Democratic Party will hold it's national convention on x and x date.
The Republican nominees squared off against the Democratic nominee in this years first debate.
Democratic pundits and party operatives are worried about x und x's chances in the coming fall election.
Mr. X, a Democrat, soundly defeated his opponent in the Fall election.

Here, hope that helped.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

You are welcome.