As America was mesmerized last night over its midterm election coverage, major news media flashed ever changing maps of red and blue as rapidly as a magician flashes cards from a deck. Of particular interest to our readership, what color is Utah? Where does Utah’s Dixie fall on the color wheel? Are we red or are we blue, or are we rather an interesting shade of purple between the two?
Election results for November 2, 2010, show that on the Senatorial level, Utah does remain among the reddest of red states, with only Summit County illuminating blue. With 99.95 percent of Utah’s precincts reporting at the time of this writing, Republican Senatorial candidate Mike Lee has taken the seat with 61.57 percent of the votes, compared to Democratic candidate Sam Granato’s 32.77 percent yield.
The color diversity comes in the race for Utah’s 2nd District for House of Representatives. Incumbent Jim Matheson has retained his Congressional seat, receiving 50.68 percent of the votes to challenger Representative Morgan Philpot’s take of 45.92 percent. The site, www.Utah.gov, reports that 100 percent of all precincts have reported.
The interesting palette comes in that race for Utah’s 2nd District. At the southern end, Washington County includes 95 of the total 855 precincts in the district, while at the northern end, Salt Lake County includes 463 of the 855 precincts, according to http://electionresults.utah.gov/xmlData/300040.html.
Washington County, the southernmost of the 16 counties in the District, favored Philpot more than 2 to 1 over Matheson, and to a lesser degree Iron County (home to Cedar City) did likewise. At the northern end of the District, however, in Salt Lake County, Matheson was favored just shy of 2 to 1 over Philpot. Red at the bottom of the State, blue to the North? Not quite.
Utah County (home to Provo) showed red in favor of Philpot, 14,976 votes, to a significantly lower 5,913 votes for the incumbent. And the surrounding counties there, Uintah and Duchesne strongly, and Wasatch to a lesser degree, also clearly voted red. From our state’s official website Election Results chart, is our extrapolate, recast loosely in geographical ascending order, South to North:
County Precincts Matheson (Dem) Philpot (Rep)
Washington 95 10,144 21,592 R
Kane 10 856 1,421 R
Garfield 11 703 875 R barely
San Juan 20 2156 1747 B
Iron 38 3,465 5,967 R
Piute 7 220 325 R
Wayne 14 582 494 B barely
Emery 12 2,030 1,647 B
Grand 14 1,998 1,101 B
Carbon 23 3,551 1,432 B
Uintah 26 2,508 4,372 R
Utah 64 5,913 14,976 R BIG
Duchesne 25 1,616 2,633 R
Wasatch 27 2,867 3,016 R
Daggett 6 298 173 B
Salt Lake 463 77,468 43,670 B
Extracted from http://electionresults.utah.gov/xmlData/300040.html.
Opinions will vary on the why’s and wherefore. But yesterday’s election evidences that Utah’s Dixie is cast today predominantly RED as the beautiful bluffs which adorn its landscape – with a notable infusion of BLUE.