Poll: Both Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch in serious danger

A much-discussed Salt Lake Tribune poll confirms what I reported last week: Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) is on track to lose the GOP nomination at next weekend's party convention. A survey of 400 Republican delegates has Bennett at 16 percent support, running third behind Mike Lee with 37 percent support and Tim Bridgewater with 20 percent support. If Bennett somehow makes it to another round of voting, he trails Lee by 33 points. It's so bad for the party establishment that 71 percent of delegates say they'd vote to replace Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) when he's up in 2012.

Oh, and a few people have asked whether or not a defeated Bennett could file for re-election as an independent. The answer: No. The deadline to run as an independent candidate was March 19, when candidates needed to file 1000 signatures to make the ballot. And it's not legal for a candidate to run in two parties' primaries, which means Bennett couldn't, say, switch to the Constitution Party in two weeks.

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