Typically, people who tell you "the polls are wrong" are usually wrong themselves. In Utah however we have statewide Dan Jones polling which has become so unreliable as to be ridiculous.
On their last poll for the 2nd District--released a day before early voting began--Dan Jones found with a 6% error margin Matheson to be beating Philpot by an astonishing
26 points! Yet Philpot ran a very close race tonight coming within 5 points of defeating Democrat Matheson. Keep in mind Philpot's narrow loss reversed increasing election victories including a Matheson's last 28 point victory in 2008. So how did Philpot move up 21 points in a single day before early voting? He didn't. Dan Jones was simply embarrassingly off.
And it isn't just this race Dan Jones got way off either: in Utah's other major race in the primary between Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater they showed
Bridgewater with an 8 point lead with a margin of error of 4% just before voting. Lee won by 2 points.
With a track record like this, I really don't want to waste another minute reading another Dan Jones poll in my life.
Which brings me to Utah's biggest hero: the supporters of Morgan Philpot. From Alice Baker to people whose names you and I will never know--people stepped up to support a genuine patriot running in his first federal election. Morgan proved that Matheson is vulnerable and that while Morgan is a wonderful candidate, he isn't uniquely qualified to take down Matheson. Folks, we're just 24 short months away from getting rid of phantom Matheson and the lies he has used to get reelected.
So until victory in 2012, I took this snapshot earlier tonight on the
New York Times election returns website with 65% reporting and Philpot in the lead to remind us all that together we can turn the 2nd District red.
