• U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson's 2nd Congressional District, by population, is mostly in Salt Lake County. And the popular conservative Democrat took an impressive 71 percent of the vote in the county. (Matheson beat Republican Bill Dew, 63-35 percent, in the whole 2nd District, which includes counties to the east, south and southwest, including Washington and Iron counties.)

• Democratic president-elect Obama nearly won in Salt Lake County. Obama lost to Republican John McCain, 47.87 percent to 48.93 percent in the county, or just an 1,883 vote difference out of more than 325,000 cast, complete but unofficial results show.

• Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker is a Democrat (elected easily in 2007). There are no Republican legislators in Salt Lake City at all.

• Democrats now control the state House and Senate seats down Matheson's 2nd District eastside suburbs and cities, from Salt Lake City in the north down to Draper in the south.

The rest of the state, Republicans dominate (with few exceptions).

• Republicans won a House and Senate seat Tuesday that were held by retiring Democrats — they took Rep. Lou Shurtliff's Ogden seat and Sen. Mike Dmitrich's southeastern Senate seat.

• Democrats now hold only three state House seats outside of Salt Lake County — and in areas that historically were strongly Democratic but are now seeing party influence waning — Tooele and Carbon counties, and Ogden.

Rep. Neil Hansen, D-Ogden, after Tuesday is the only House Democrat north of Salt Lake City. Newly elected Democrat Christine Watkins, of Price, is the only House Democrat south of Draper. Longtime Rep. James Gowans, D-Tooele, is the lone Democratic holdout to the west of Salt Lake County. Democrats just can't seem to win a legislative seat to the east of the county.

• Republicans hold a vise grip on local, partisan offices. They hold control of all local county governments — exceptions are Carbon and Summit counties (and now Salt Lake County), where there is a majority of Democratic incumbents.

• There are 45 state House seats outside of Salt Lake County — Republicans hold 42 of them, Democrats only three.

• There are 17 state Senate seats outside of Salt Lake County — Republicans hold all of them.

• In Utah County, all state House and Senate seats remain in Republican hands. Democrats saw a resurgence of sorts this year in the county — running well-financed, moderate-to-conservative Democratic candidates with good connections to their communities. They all got slaughtered by a Republican wave, losing every race. The Democratic House candidates in the county spent, together, $106,664; the GOP winners spent $227,693 — financially competitive by previous standards, but to no avail.

Many of the Utah County Democratic legislative candidates got beaten by 2-to-1, even 3-to-1, margins. Democrats didn't even run anyone against Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem. Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, who couldn't have gotten much more bad press about his bossy personal conduct, beat his Democratic challenger, 61-39 percent.

• Some thought that former Davis County commissioner Dell Holbrook, a Democrat, well-known in the county, could win a commission seat again. Holbrook was beaten 2-to-1 by Republican John Petroff.

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com