Candidate Andrew Badger (right, light shirt) claims that only his campaign has the momentum to defeat incumbent U.S. Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) and enact change on Capitol Hill.
SALT LAKE CITY – Congressional candidate Andrew Badger is predicting an upset victory in Tuesday’s primary balloting.
“According to the largest and most up-to-date poll conducted in the race for Utah’s 1st Congressional District,” Badger boasted Friday, “we’re now neck and neck with the incumbent.”
Badger claims that his campaign is on the verge of a historic upset.
Of course, that depends on whose polling you believe.
The Badger campaign is reporting that they commissioned a poll of 426 registered Republicans in the 1st District between June 20 to 22 by GCFI Research.
The results of that survey were that 40 percent of voters reported that they were likely to vote for incumbent Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) or were leaning that way.
Another 33 percent said they were likely to vote for Andrew Badger or were leaning that way.
Finally, 14 percent responded that they were likely to vote for challenger Tina Cannon or were leaning that way.
Thirteen percent of those polled said they were unlikely to vote for anybody in the primary.
Badger is likely banking heavily on the poll’s 5- to 7-percent margin of error.
But Moore’s campaign is comfortable with the results of their own exit polling of voters who have already submitted their ballots.
In their exit poll of 559 responses by DDI Research, 62 percent of 1st District voters cast their ballots for Moore, 24 percent for Badger and 14 percent for Cannon.
The Moore campaign is somewhat dubious about Badger’s claim that his poll is the “… largest and most up-to-date” survey of 1st District voters, since their exit poll was launched Friday via text messaging.
They also wonder who GCFI Research is.
Badger’s press release on his polling results said that, just like rest of the country, Utah voters are hungry for change.
“They’re tired of the same old establishment approach,” he said, “which always sells us out to the left whenever the going get tough.”
Badger cites Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Moore as prime examples of such establishment Republicans.
Recently, Romney joined nine other Republicans and 10 Democrats in advocating a framework for a common-sense gun control that passed the Senate on Thursday and the House on Friday.
Badger also repeated his claim that he is the only challenger in the race who can beat the incumbent to enact change.
Badger, Moore and Cannon will face off in primary balloting on Tuesday.