UTAH COUNTY -- Two new polls were just released regarding the race for Utah’s 4th Congressional District race between Mia Love and Doug Owens.
Each poll has very different findings. The internal poll done for Mia Love indicates she’s winning the race in a blowout. But Doug Owens claims his polls show he's within striking distance.
"It shows we got a horse race," said Doug Owens, the Democrat running against Republican Mia Love.
"Our view of his poll is that it's a fairly rosy picture of the election for him," said Scott Riding, a managing partner at Y2 Analytics, which conducted Love's campaign poll.
Mia Love's campaign claims it's a wide race between the Republican and her Democratic challenger. Officials with the Love campaign said the numbers don't lie. Their polling shows Love with 47 percent support and Owens at 28 percent.
On the flip side, Owens' poll puts him at 44 percent support from Utah voters and Love at 47 percent.
"It shows that we're within striking distance, it's actually within the margin of error,” Owens said. “It shows that message that I've got is resonating, which is Utah's hard-working, middle-class families are being harder pressed than ever and need some relief, and they need a strong, independent voice to speak for them in Washington.”
But as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.
"I think it's hard to say that Doug is as close as he thinks he is," Riding said.
In Love's polling, 24 percent of Utahns are either undecided or swaying toward another candidate. Owens' survey didn't account for third-party voters, but the company that did the polling for the Love campaign is co-owned by her campaign manager, Dave Hansen.
FOX 13 News asked if that's a conflict.
"I understand the question, but I just don't think it has relevance,” Riding said. “These are both internal campaign polls, so I don't think our conflict is any greater than the internal polls of the Owens campaign.”
Owens disagrees.
"It certainly shows a lack of independence, and I hope someone will look into that,” he said. “My pollster is a well-respected national firm completely independent of the campaign, so we have every confidence that those numbers are accurate."
