Utah’s 2nd Congressional District Debate Between Colby Jenkins and Congressman Celeste Maloy at the KUED studios at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on Monday, June 10, 2024.
Rep. Celeste Maloy’s lead over challenger Colby Jenkins continued to narrow as updated results were released Thursday, the third day of vote counting in a race that was too close to predict.
Another set of elections Results Posted after 4:45pm on Thursday, it showed Maloy with 50.48% of the vote, compared to Jenkins’ 49.52%.
wednesday evening1,907 votes separated the two candidates with 92,355 tabulated ballots. On Thursday—after about 11,220 more votes were counted statewide—Maloy narrowly maintained her lead, now by only about 991 votes.
GET MORNING HEADLINES IN YOUR INBOX
Salt Lake County, the most populous part of Utah’s 2nd Congressional District, posted about 2,311 more votes for the 2nd Congressional District on Thursday. This is likely the last major set of results before this year’s primary, according to Salt Lake County Clerk Lannie Chapman.
“We should have the majority — everything we can scan and tabulate, scanned and tabulated (posted tonight). All we’re left with is the stuff that needs to be cured,” Chapman said, referring to mail-in ballots that poll workers are trying to correct.
There may be a few more mail-in ballots coming to her office, but she said there probably aren’t many left. On Thursday, for example, “we received maybe 90 good ballots” that were postmarked in time.
“But again, we’re talking onesie, twosie, as far as Salt Lake County is concerned,” she said.
Jenkins has gained ground on Maloy with considerable momentum in Washington County in southern Utah. There he has found a stronghold, not just in percentage terms but also in terms of the number of votes. Of the 33,780 votes counted so far in that race, Jenkins has won 19,871 to Maloy’s 13,909.
The Republican matchup between Maloy and Jenkins was the closest congressional race in Utah this primary – an election influenced by a complex and competitive dynamic that showed a split in Utah’s Republican Party.
The race was marked by rival endorsements — Sen. Mike Lee endorsed Jenkins just days before the Utah GOP convention in April. Then, with just a week to go until Election Day, former President Donald Trump endorsed Maloy.
That’s even though Jenkins tried to portray himself as a candidate more modeled on Trump after criticizing Maloy for her vote in support of a bipartisan spending packageJenkins argued that Maloy gave up the GOP’s narrow majority in the House of Representatives and thereby advanced the interests of Democrats.
However, Maloy defended her vote as the most fiscally responsible option, calling careful compromise a key to maintaining negotiating power in Congress and promising not to bend over the issues most important to Utah.
The race proved to be highly competitive and it’s “hard to know what to make of it given the competing endorsements,” said Chris Karpowitz, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, but ultimately both candidates are “really conservative” and Utah Republican voters likely had a hard time choosing between them.
Maloy likely benefited from her incumbent status — but then again, she wasn’t an incumbent delegate for long, as she only won her seat in a special election in November after former Rep. Chris Stewart resigned due to his wife’s illness.
However, Jenkins drew a wave of support by portraying himself as a “warrior,” flaunting his time as a combat veteran and US Army Special Forces Green Beret. He won the hearts of state delegates at the GOP nominating convention in Utah, but not enough to keep Maloy off the ballot.
Colby won 57% at the convention — 3% shy of clinching the nomination — while Maloy got 43%, which she relied heavily on because she didn’t collect signatures to qualify under Utah’s dual path to the ballot.
It’s unclear how much impact Trump’s endorsement of Maloy could have had on the race, given that it came about a week before Election Day, and because it conflicted with the endorsement of Jenkins by Lee, who has been an outspoken Trump supporter.
“Things like recommendations are important, and the recommendations here were strangely divided,” Karpowitz said.
Matthew Burbank, a political science professor at the University of Utah, said the close race between Maloy and Jenkins “illustrates the complex nature of the Republican Party right now.”
“Primaries always do that to some extent,” he says. “On the one hand, there’s something very predictable here, in the sense that if you’re going to challenge a sitting member of Congress, you want to do it as quickly as possible. … But it was a bit of a surprise to me because everything I had heard from Republicans about Maloy was that they thought she was on a roll, they thought she was very responsive.
However, Jenkins’ “strength” “was a bit of a surprise to me,” he said.
Results showed Maloy had a healthy lead over Jenkins in most counties. However, Jenkins led Maloy in other rural areas, including Tooele (52%) and Washington (nearly 59%) counties.
While there may still be some ballots left, Burbank said Thursday that it seemed unlikely Jenkins could flip the race. Although close, the results did not reach the razor-thin margins needed to fall within the recount range, which would be about 260 votes.
“Based on the pattern we usually see (with results), I wouldn’t expect it to change,” Burbank said, adding that Maloy’s lead could grow or shrink as more votes are counted, but he predicted they would would remain in charge. “I think she’ll probably win unless something strange happens here.”
The post Maloy’s lead drops to less than 1% in tight battle for Utah’s 2nd Congressional District appeared first on Utah News Dispatch.
