I have not done the research to see if my facts are right, but I've read that only about 3% of voters showed up to vote. Regardless, over 45,000 people voted for our District 3 House seat and 60% of them voted for Jason Chaffetz.
Utah County is the most conservative county, in the most conservative state. Historically, the incumbent always wins here. I have to admit that I am somewhat shocked that Jason has done what all indicators (statistics and analysts) said would be virtually impossible to do.
It makes me happy that we can still shake things up. That we have a say. That we all can make a difference.
Assuming Jason wins the November election, he will have 2 years, starting in January, to show us all what a difference one person can make. Hopefully, for him, it will be enough to keep his job, since we just proved that we are willing to change things up!
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What we thought was funny were the comments that news commentators were making.
"We figure the reason Cannon lost was the poor voter turnout."
No, the reason he lost was that people who didn't want him voted for his opponent.
The reason he lost was that he didn't get as many votes as the other guy!
Felt good to have a vote that meant something.
Here's an interesting summary of voter turnout (Daily Herald, 6/26, http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/271561/17/) :
"It turns out that the dismal 9 percent Utah County turnout wasn't quite accurate. That number reflects the percentage of total possible voters in the county (243,172) and votes cast (23,041). But Tuesday's primary was only for Republicans and unaffiliated voters who switched at the polls. That trims the voting pool to 173,667 and ups the turnout to 13.3 percent.
But that's not all: Utah County Clerk/Auditor Bryan Thompson estimates that only about a thousand people changed their affiliation to Republican at the polls on Tuesday. That's only about 1.3 percent of the roughly 80,000 non-affiliated voters in the county. So only counting registered Republicans, turnout was closer to 22 percent.
There was also a difference if you lived in the 2nd or 3rd district. The former didn't have the Chaffetz/Cannon race, just the state treasurer race. The result was that the 2nd District had a third of the turnout of the 3rd District by percentage."
Some people will say anything to win an election.
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