I’ll explain this in greater detail in a piece posting tomorrow … but this 4th District race will come down to the wire — and it’s possible it will be as close or closer than the Love-McAdams race two years ago.

But some brief thoughts … #utpol

For the third day in a row Owens had really really good numbers. Based on my crude model — which just looks at remaining votes and apportions them based on results thus far — it looks close. If he has a fourth big day, he probably wins. #utpol

But drilling into the precinct data, we see here’s where the bulk of the votes came from today (the numbers matter less than the tilt of the precincts, and there’s lots of red).

Yday’s batch wasn’t quite as striking as this, Saturdays was probably even more pronounced. #utpol

So then we look at which precincts are well below average — either they didn’t vote, or they did vote and they haven’t been counted. All of these precincts are at least 10% below the overall county turnout — what do you notice? #utpol

Maybe those precincts just generally don’t turn out? So I looked at 2018 comparison and the precincts that are substantially below where we would expect them to be based on their turnout in 2018 vs this year. Here’s what it looks like. Aren’t just blue, they're dark blue #utpol

So here are the options:
1. People voted for medical marijuana but stayed home this year (I’d have to look at 2016 and probably 2014 to determine that)
2. People did vote and the votes haven’t been counted.

If it’s the former, Ben is toast. If it’s the latter … #utpol

… based on the estimated votes remaining and what it would take from those low districts to get them to where we would expect relative to overall turnout, Ben has a decent shot at winning by about 1,500 votes. #utpol

All of this gets into a very murky area that depends on estimates and assumptions and razor-thin margins.

But remember in 2018, Ben trailed by 1,516 on the last day after Utah County’s final post (UTCo is pretty much done), and won after SLCo came in.

This’ll be close. #utpol