Finding herself staring at impossible odds, former state lawmaker Becky Edwards conceded defeat Wednesday evening, meaning Celeste Maloy, will be the Republican nominee — and a decisive front-runner — to replace her boss, Rep. Chris Stewart, in Congress.

It was an improbable journey for a candidate who was virtually unknown when the campaign began, upsetting more established, better-known and better-funded opponents — both at the convention and in Tuesday’s special GOP primary.

So let’s look at how Maloy went from no-name to nominee.

Becky & Biden

One thing that has to have hurt Edwards was her vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

We can try all we want to convince ourselves otherwise, but Utahns have been, and remain, in Donald Trump’s camp. It would be one thing if it was a middling portion of the GOP that was Trump fanboys and fangirls, but it’s significant.

Maloy didn’t vote in the 2020 election, but it didn’t seem to hurt her.

A recent Noble Predictive Insights poll showed Trump with 48% support among registered Republicans, with the next closest contender in the crowded Republican presidential field, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 30 points back.

The Regional Divide

At the very beginning of the primary I wrote about the biggest dynamic that would shape this race: The split between metropolitan counties where Edwards would presumably do well, versus the rural counties where Maloy would need to build her base.

As I mentioned, there are results left to be counted, but after election night that split was on clear display.

Edwards won just less than half the vote in the metro counties — Davis, Salt Lake and Tooele — beating Maloy 48% to 27%. But in the counties to the south, Maloy triumphed, 50% to 20%. Bruce Hough had a little more balance, drawing 24% in the metro counties, 29% in the rural.

(Tooele is a bit of a bubble county, but I included it in metro because most of the the voters are closer to Salt Lake and, interestingly, it was very evenly split, with Maloy and Hough at 36% and Edwards at 29%.)

As of Wednesday evening, 53% of the votes that had been counted were in those three metro counties, 47% in the rural, according to the AP. That margin will likely close, as there are considerably more ballots left to be counted in the rural counties.

So it looks to me like Edwards didn’t dominate quite enough in the metro counties to offset Maloy’s rural strength. The center of power for this seat, perhaps more than any other in the state, remains largely in the rural areas.

Moderate Republicans? No, Thanks

If you thought 2nd District voters were a moderate brand of Republican, think again. Sure, Edwards and Maloy will probably finish reasonably close in the final tally, but Edwards can thank Hough for splitting the more conservative vote.

Hough ran hard on a pro-Trump platform. It’s a safe bet, then, that were he not in the race — or if Republicans believed in using ranked choice voting — Maloy’s margin of victory wouldn’t have been a couple of percentage points, but closer to a couple dozen.

Probably something Sen. Mitt Romney would want to pay attention to as he Hamlets over his political future.

Still, the splitting of the conservative vote gave Edwards a path to victory that she was nearly able to pull off. Had she won, Edwards would have been a juicy target for conservative Republican challengers. Somewhere in the district, there are probably a few ambitious politicos disappointed she didn’t prevail.

Poor turnout

As of Wednesday night, a little over 70,000 ballots had been counted. The Salt Lake County Clerk reports there are another 2,600 in the 2nd District to be counted. In addition, according to reporting by my colleague Bryan Schott, Washington County has another 12,700, but not all of those are ballots cast by Republican voters eligible to vote in the 2nd District primary.

Even if they were, the turnout result would be well below last year’s 2nd District primary between Rep. Chris Stewart and Erin Rider, and the lowest in a congressional primary in years. There are a few likely reasons turnout is down.

First, turnout is always bad in a special election. The last time one was held, to replace Rep. Jason Chaffetz in 2017, fewer than 73,000 ballots were cast. Having one race on the ballot just doesn’t generate enough excitement.

Some parts of the state had the 2nd District special election and municipal primaries. But several cities — Salt Lake City, Magna, Kearns, South Salt Lake and Millcreek — opted not to just have one election using Ranked Choice Voting in November. So, again, those local primaries that could have spurred turnout didn’t happen.

Finally, I’ve got to think that putting the election the day after the long Labor Day weekend made it easy for voters to forget to fill out and return the ballot and surely depressed turnout.

All told, it looks like turnout in the 2nd District will end up somewhere between 45-50% of registered Republicans. Not great, but still better than letting a few hundred delegates pick the replacement.

Polling is hard

Low turnout means it’s really hard to know who will actually end up voting, which made polling this race a nightmare.

I saw public polls, private polls and candidates bragging about internal polls. All of them were wildly off the mark. Just a few weeks ago there was a poll I won’t name that had Maloy at 9% with nearly half of voters undecided.

The lesson here, I suppose, is don’t put a lot of faith in polls, especially in races where the electorate is hard to define.

Utah’s 5th congresswoman

Maloy now advances to face off against state Sen. Kathleen Riebe, the Democratic nominee meaning that Utah will have its 5th congresswoman in history and the first since Rep. Mia Love.