Predictions for Utah's Races

The PoliticIt team sat down to calculate new It Scores for the Utah races prior to tomorrow's general election. Below are the results of our calculations. This blog post focuses exclusively on Democrats and Republicans running in a number of Utah's major races.

Orrin Hatch seems to be out performing Scott Howell by a large margin. Based on these numbers, we predict that Orrin Hatch will win. Here are the numbers:

The It Score measures a politician's digital influence.

Orrin Hatch

85

Scott Howell

15

Gary Herbert is currently leading in the gubernatorial race over Peter Cooke. He has increased his margin of digital influence within the last three months. Gary Herbert will win. 

Gary Herbert

78

Peter Cooke

22

Donna McAleer has shown an extensive jump in her digital influence over the last three months. Back in July, her It Score was 30. However, it appears as though the power of incumbency might be too much to defeat in this race. We predict Rob Bishop wins this one. 

Rob Bishop

51

Donna Mcaleer

49

Although we saw a drop in Chris Stewart's digital influence while Jay Seegmiller's digital mark increased over the last three months, Chris Stewart is currently leading over Jay Seegmiller. Our data shows Chris Stewart will win this race.

Chris Stewart

62

Jay Seegmiller

38

The It Scores indicate that Jason Chaffetz will defeat Soren Simonsen; This race features the largest margin of influence between two congressional candidates in Utah.

Jason Chaffetz

83

Soren Simonsen

17

And now for the race you may have been waiting for -- Matheson vs. Love. The It Scores indicate that Mia Love is leading over Jim Matheson. Mia has broadened the 54 to 46 It Score gap we saw in July and now sits with a comfortable lead. This will likely be the closest congressional race in Utah, but it appears as though Mia will be "it" after the general election. 

Mia Love

66

Jim Matheson

33

Ben McAdams looks like he has broadened the margin of his digital influence. By nearly all measures, it looks like Ben McAdams should win this. McAdams' biggest threat is straight ticket voters who will show up to the polls primarily to vote for Mitt Romney.

Ben McAdams

68

Mark Crockett

23

The It Score measures a politician's digital influence. So far the It Score has predicted election outcomes in more that 200 races with 87% accuracy (CNBC, Yahoo! Finance, Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch). The candidate with the highest It Score is likely winning in their race. The It Score is calculated by collecting massive amounts of data from what people are doing and saying on the internet, on social networks, and in the real world. The algorithm learns like we do. When new data becomes available, it evolves to account for any new changes or predictions it made incorrectly. This allows the It Score to grow smarter over time. Below you'll find It Scores that were calculated from data on July 12, 2012. To learn more about the It Score, check out this article by GigaOM or visit our About Us page.

A brief glance at these It Scores suggest that if the election were held today Republicans would likely win in nearly every race in the state of Utah. The Democratic party’s greatest hope in Utah seems to lie with Jim Matheson who is facing a formidable opponent in Love.