| Description |
The purpose of this project was to determine what factors (Table 1) affected candidates from Salt Lake County who ran for the State House of Representatives. Secondly, I wanted to use the identified significant factors to predict election results. And finally, I wanted to interpret the political significance of the resulting model. Data was gathered on all of the major party candidates. The majority of the data was obtained from records retained in governmental offices. The rest was gathered through personal phone calls to the legislators, lobbyists, and political party headquarters. The data was carefully reviewed for discrepancies between sources, as well as miscopies, and typographical errors. However, due to the personal nature of various questions, some sampling error may have occurred. The factors of age and length of residency in district were dropped from; the study due to inavailability of information, and lack of knowledge on the part of the candidates. Data was collected on 109 candidates from the 1982 and 1984 elections. Each candidate had on the average 10399.44 REGISTERED voters in his district and 936.4679 people vote in their SAME PARTY in the primary. Among the 109 candidates, the study included 51 Democrats, 58 Republicans; 17 females, 92 males; 6 candidates running in uncontested races, 103 candidates running in contested races; 68 candidates running in a race where no third party candidate was running, 31 running where a third party candidate was running; 65 incumbents, 44 non-incumbents; 25 non-LDS, 84 LDS; 55 LDS Republicans,; 54 non-LDS Republicans; 85 candidates running in Salt Lake County, 24 running in Salt Lake City; and 56 candidates from the 1982 campaign, as well as 53 candidates from the 1984 campaign. |
