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

• Matheson is even getting slightly more of the "active LDS" vote than Swallow: 47 to 46 percent.

• The incumbent Democrat is getting 70 percent of the Salt Lake County vote.

Political experts said in 2002 that for Matheson to hold his newly redrawn district he had to win the more politically mixed county by 60 percent. And he barely did that.

In his rematch run this year, Swallow said he'd do much better in Salt Lake County than he did in 2002. But so far that isn't happening, Jones found.

But while the new poll numbers are bleak for Swallow, his campaign aides say things will turn around quickly.

This week the National Republican Campaign Committee, which has targeted the race, started pouring cash into the Utah TV market, buying its first rounds of ads in what is called an "independent expenditure."

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but longtime GOP campaign strategist Dave Hansen, who is advising the Swallow camp, said it appears the NRCC could be pumping up to $125,000 a week into pro-Swallow buys. The NRCC's latest Federal Election Committee reports show it has spent $202,544 recently on pro-Swallow campaigning.

In the final four weeks of the campaign, the NRCC could spend upward of $600,000 on TV, $200,000 on direct mail and $100,000 telephoning GOP voters to encourage them to vote for Swallow, said Hansen, who adds he has no personal knowledge of what the NRCC will actually do but does know what is possible in the last month of a high-profile Utah congressional contest.

"We started our own TV ads Tuesday. The NRCC started Saturday. Both come after your poll," said Swallow.

Add the national party spending to Swallow's own campaign spending and many normally GOP voters will be turned from Matheson to Swallow, Hansen believes.

But Matheson said: "If the NRCC believes these (new poll) numbers, I don't think they'll spend much more in this race — not with a 32 point deficit" by their GOP candidate.

Matheson's own campaign will spend around $750,000 on TV ads, he said; the first ones started running two weeks ago.

Matheson added he expects Swallow or Swallow supporters to start negative TV ads. In the end, however, he expects a healthy victory Nov. 2 — "by a greater margin than two years ago."

Swallow said he doesn't know what the NRCC's ads will say, but his own TV ads will "compare Jim's record in Congress to what I would do; yes, we'll talk about how he's performed."

One sidelight: If it looks as if Swallow and President Bush are younger in the NRCC TV ads than they appear today, it's because the footage is from Swallow's 2002 campaign. Hansen says the new McCain-Feingold campaign finance law resulted in problems for the Bush re-election campaign if the president shot new ads for GOP congressional candidates, so the old 2002 video was just recycled.

---

E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com