Matheson simply outpaces Christensen among voters who normally push the Republican button on the ballot, the survey shows.

Matheson gets 35 percent of the Republican vote (Christensen, a Republican, gets 52 percent). Matheson gets 54 percent of the LDS vote (Christensen, a former LDS bishop, gets 34 percent).

Matheson gets 83 percent of the independent voters, always a critical group to win in the 2nd District. Christensen gets only 9 percent of independent voters, Jones found.

Clearly, Christensen's main campaign message that "America needs Utah" — that a vote for Matheson could be a vote to turn the House over to national Democrats — isn't working.

The poll shows that Hatch leads Democrat Pete Ashdown 62-28 percent. A 30-year veteran of the Senate, Hatch has set a record in Utah congressional fund-raising, collecting more than $6 million. He had $2.8 million in cash a few weeks ago.

Ashdown may never have had a chance to beat Hatch, as the Internet-access business owner has hinted at in recent interviews.

Utah has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1970.

Hatch runs strong in all the voter classifications that he needs to win: 89 percent of Republicans support him; 48 percent of independent voters; 76 percent of LDS voters.

Ashdown gets only 79 percent of Democratic voters, where Matheson gets 96 percent.

In the 1st Congressional District, Bishop leads Democratic challenger Steve Olsen 56-32 percent.

In the 3rd Congressional District, Cannon leads Democratic challenger Christian Burridge 56-27 percent.

The Democrats in both the 1st and 3rd district races hold their party base of around 20 percent of voters and pick up about half of the independent votes — not enough to make a serious challenge in those heavily Republican districts.

Finally, a little-known Utah constitutional amendment that will be on Tuesday's ballot has an uncertain future. Jones found that 38 percent of Utahns favor the amendment, 43 percent oppose it, but 19 percent didn't know how they would vote on it.

The amendment would allow the Utah Legislature to exempt from taxation small personal property items of businesses, such as desks, filing cabinets and so on. Tax officials say it costs businesses more to figure out those assessments than they actually pay in personal property taxes.

Over the past two weeks, Jones has been conducting early voting face-to-face exit interviews for KSL-TV. Tuesday night he will give the results on all his exit polling. None of the early voting exit poll data went into this survey, which was conducted by telephone starting Oct. 26. Jones, an independent contractor for the newspaper and TV station, has also done polling for the Hatch campaign this year.

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E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com