GOP U.S. House Rep. Jason Chaffetz holds a 46-percentage-point lead over his Democratic challenger, Stephen Tryon, and appears on a safe track to winning another term, a new UtahPolicy poll shows.
The 3rd District is based in Utah County, but also includes parts of Salt Lake County and counties to the southeast.
UPD pollster Dan Jones & Associates finds that if the election were today, Chaffetz would have 69 percent support to Tryon’s 23 percent.
Eight percent of 3rd District voters are still undecided.
Chaffetz, a former BYU football placekicker and chief of staff to former GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., first won election in 2008 by unseating Republican incumbent Chris Cannon in a primary election.
Chaffetz has easily won re-election since, and was picked as chairman of the House Oversight Committee 18 months ago.
Before and since then Chaffetz has been a harsh critic of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, especially over the Benghazi terrorist attacks that left an American ambassador dead.
Tryon is a retired U.S. Army Lt. Col., who also worked for Overstock.com– the same firm once headed by GOP gubernatorial candidate Jonathon Johnson, who was eliminated in this year’s June primary.
Tryon ran unsuccessfully for the 3rd District as an independent previously.
Jones finds that in the Chaffetz/Tryon race:
— 93 percent of Republicans support Chaffetz, 2 percent like Tryon and 4 percent are undecided.
— 80 percent of Democrats like Tryon, only 5 percent Chaffetz and 15 percent are undecided.
— 62 percent of political independents are with Chaffetz, 29 percent like Tryon and 9 percent are undecided.
The 3rd District is heavily Republican, not held by a Democrat since the mid-1990s.
Chaffetz had an unpleasant primary with BYU professor Chia-Chi Teng, who was defeated in the state Republican Convention but advanced to the primary via SB54 and gathering 7,000 GOP voter signatures.
Chaffetz easily dispatched Teng, 79-21 percent in the June Republican primary.
Jones polled 247 3rd District voters from July 18 to Aug. 4. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 6.23 percent.
