While some people may deride voter exit polls, they really are one of the best ways to find out all kinds of things about an election and the citizens who participate in them.
As is usually the case, the Deseret News' pollster, Dan Jones & Associates, conducted an exit poll for KSL-TV on Nov. 4. The immediate results were used on KSL the night of the election to predict — before the votes were actually counted — who would win in different races or ballot issues.
I like to study the demographics of such exit polls, looking a bit deeper, if you will, to see trends and voting patterns underneath the candidate favoritisms.
And the results from the Nov. 4 exit poll show a great willingness on the part of LDS and politically independent voters to cast a ballot for a Democrat. (Jones' exit poll, along with his pre-election poll for the newspaper and TV station, also shows he had a good year — producing some of the most accurate polls when compared to actual vote totals.)
Who knows if 2008 is a trend year or just a reflection of deep, real displeasure of the job President George W. Bush and some national Republicans have done over the last eight years? Certainly the meltdown of the national economy and financial systems the final weeks before the vote impacted results.
And considering the Democratic wave that flowed in many states this year, Utah remains one of the most Republican states in the nation. Only moderate gains were made here by the minority party in Salt Lake County positions and the Utah Legislature.
Still, there were some significant wins for Utah Democrats. And the leadership elections in the Utah House and Senate also reflected a desire for change — a displeasure in some quarters in how things have been going.
Here are some of the more interesting results of Jones' exit poll on Nov. 4:
The Barack Obama and John McCain contest in Utah broke out clearly along party lines — 94 percent of Democrats voted for Obama, 90 percent of the Republicans voted for McCain. Since there are more Republicans than Democrats in Utah, of course McCain won here. Still, Obama actually won by a few hundred votes in Salt Lake County, nothing to sneeze at in a presidential race in Utah.
Obama picked up most of the politically independent votes, 48 percent to 43 percent across the state. That also is good news for Democrats, since it shows that independent voters, even in some conservative parts of Utah, were willing to consider the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.
LDS voters in Utah still went with McCain for president, even though nationally Republicans rejected former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Mormon, as their party's nominee and McCain didn't pick Romney as his vice presidential running mate. Jones' poll shows that McCain got 75 percent of the Utah Mormon vote, while only 21 percent went with Obama.
U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, is a political template for winning Republicans. Matheson won his largest victory ever this year, and he swept up into his support all kinds of voters in Salt Lake County. Matheson got nearly 40 percent of the GOP vote in his district, which takes in the eastern part of Salt Lake County, the northeastern tip of Utah County, and counties to the east, south and southwest, including Washington and Iron counties. That is impressive. Republican Bill Dew got just 2 percent of the Democratic vote.
And Matheson outpolled Dew, 51-45, among LDS voters. Matheson got 77 percent of the independent vote, compared to Dew's 15 percent. Considering that Matheson barely won re-election in 2002 with less than 1 percent of the vote (after the GOP-controlled Legislature redistricted him into a more Republican area), 2008 was a real redemption for Matheson.
In his Salt Lake County mayoral re-election, Democrat Peter Corroon mirrored Matheson's across-the-board popularity. Corroon got 37 percent of the GOP vote and 77 percent of the independent vote. Fifty-one percent of county Mormons voted for Corroon.
In all of this, GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. set a new statewide record majority in his re-election, getting 78 percent of the vote. Huntsman got 42 percent of the Democratic vote and three-quarters of the independent vote, Jones' exit poll shows. The governor received 88 percent of the LDS vote.
This all shows that not only did many Utahns split-ticket vote this year, they did so with huge swings of support — like a third to one half of the one party's support going to the opposing party's candidate.
Conclusion: Utahns, both Republicans, Democrats and Mormons alike, are less dogmatic, less committed to a party's ideals, than they are to what an individual candidate is saying. So much for the Utah Republican Party's "I Can" public relations campaign this past summer — at least how it played out in some of the major races.
Jones' exit data shows that Democrats have some real possibilities for gaining more strength in Salt Lake County (although there were disappointing showings for the minority party in Weber and Utah counties).
It also shows that Utah Republicans, while still in a strong majority in the state, have some party rebuilding to do, especially in Salt Lake County, and statewide among their own party members, independents and LDS voters.
Deseret News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com.