On Monday I published my predictions for 94 of Utah's election races: Congressional, Attorney General and all of the Legislative contests. 94 of them in all.
Turns out, I got it right on 92. That's 98%.
Where was I wrong?
I thought Republican Sophia DiCaro was going to knock off Democrat Larry Wiley in West Valley City. Wiley hung on by 33 votes.
I also predicted that Democrat Diane Lewis would pull the upset over Republican Earl Tanner in West Jordan. All signs looked like this was going to be a very close race, but it wasn't.
My overall projection was Democrats picking up one seat on the Hill. I was right on that as well, it just took a different mathematical equation than I thought to get to that end result.
In 2012, I made predictions in 100 races in Utah, and got 96 of them right.
When you're leading up to the elections and trying to divine what may happen, you have to separate the informational wheat from the chaff. Voices are constantly whispering to you that this seat is in play, while the other side says it's not.
When you've been covering Utah politics for a decade and a half, you develop a pretty good instinct for how things will play out.
Some of it is luck. More of it is skill.
Numbers don't lie.
