Lone new UT-3 poll leaves our forecast for Maloy essentially unchanged

A new Lighthouse Research survey of 508 registered voters in Utah's 3rd District, fielded September 2-15, finds Republican Celeste Maloy at 44.5% and Democrat Kent Udell at 26.4%, with 2.8% choosing another option. That is an 18.1-point gap. A large share of the sample did not pick any of the listed choices.

The poll confirms what our forecast already showed. Our model gives Udell a 1 in 100 chance of winning the seat, the same as in our previous run this morning. Maloy's chance stays at 99%.

The poll did move the projected margin slightly. Our model now puts Maloy's expected margin at R+21.4, down from R+22.0 in the previous run. The Lighthouse result is closer than that average, which accounts for the small shift. Our range of plausible outcomes moved with it: the 5th to 95th percentile now runs from R+35.6 to R+7.2, compared with R+36.2 to R+7.8 before. Even the Democratic end of that range leaves Maloy ahead.

The district sits well outside the set of races that shape the national House picture. Our model gives Democrats a 98% chance of winning a House majority, which requires 218 seats, with a mean of 245.5 Democratic seats. That estimate is somewhat firmer than it should be: our simulation correlates error nationally, by census division, by state and within each district, but it does not yet link demographically similar districts in different places, because we lack the data to do so.