Swallow slips far behind

With four weeks until Election Day, 2nd District Rep. Jim Matheson is crushing his GOP challenger, John Swallow, by 32 percentage points, a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows.

But Swallow says he will "close quickly" and the 2004 finals will be like the pair's 2002 contest: "A horse race and a very close vote."

The survey, conducted by pollster Dan Jones & Associates, found that if the election were held today, Matheson, D-Utah, would get 63 percent support from registered voters; Swallow would get 31 percent, and minor party candidates trail badly. Only 5 percent of those surveyed were undecided, Jones found, meaning that Swallow has the task of taking a significant number of votes away from Matheson to even come close to winning.

Swallow said: "We will have two more weeks of TV (ads) than we had in 2002," when Swallow lost a squeaker to Matheson. "This race will be deja vu all over again," Swallow joked, adding that with President Bush and statewide GOP candidates winning big, he'll end up OK as well.

But for now, at least, things are not looking good for Swallow, who lost to Matheson two years ago by less than 1 percentage point in one of the closest U.S. House races of 2002.

Matheson, who hopes to come home to campaign full time as Congress adjourns later this week, said: "I think these are great, great numbers. (The poll) validates what I've said all along, that Utahns don't want someone to go back to Washington and vote someone else's agenda, but represent them."

And the poll reflects "just how hard I've worked" both in campaigning off the Wasatch Front and spending time around the large geographic district, said Matheson. Jones found that Matheson actually leads Swallow 54-42 percent in the district's non-Wasatch Front counties, which are heavily Republican.

Matheson has raised more than $1 million and has said for more than a year that he believed he'd do better in the newly enlarged 2nd District than he did in 2002.

Swallow, too, has raised significantly more money than he had two years ago. But like 2002, Swallow had a GOP convention and primary battle this year, which took time and money.

Matheson is putting up some startling numbers, Jones found in the new survey, especially considering the 2nd District votes about 60 percent Republican in other partisan races.

For example:

• Matheson is getting 36 percent of the Republican vote and 84 percent of the independent vote. It is generally assumed that in the 2nd District, which includes the eastern part of Salt Lake County and counties to the east and south, the winning candidate must get a significant number of independent voters.

• Matheson is getting two-thirds of the female vote.