Utah s 1998 elections consisted of both House and Senate races, but the only statewide races were for the statewide School Board. The Institute removed contributions raised by the School Board candidates to focus its analysis on the legislative races. Utah s 1998 legislative races consisted of 75 House races and 15 Senate races. The legislature had 20 open races in which no incumbent sought re-election. It should be noted however that 19 of those races had only token candidates opposing them.
Incumbency is a major advantage for candidates in winning a race.
In the 70 legislative races where incumbents were running, challengers defeated incumbents in only three of them. In the 1998 Utah legislative elections not one candidate won without raising the most money or without having the advantages of incumbency. The following table shows the breakdown of contributions by source, from highest dollar to lowest. The most generous source of funds to campaigns was political party PACs and candidates themselves. Money brought forward from previous election cycles was the second largest source of contributions.