Emily Buss, Utah’s sole third party legislator and a member of the Utah Forward Party, is currently trailing her Republican challenger in her bid for a full term representing the state’s 11th Senate District.
According to unofficial results published by the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office as of Thursday afternoon, Republican Brooks Benson leads the race with 16,222 votes, or 50.6 percent of the total, against Buss, who currently has 15,813 votes. The two are the only candidates who appeared on the ballot, following the withdrawal of Democratic nominee MacKenzie Miller in August, who then endorsed Buss.
The 11th District includes portions of Salt Lake, Tooele, and Utah counties. A current breakdown shows Buss with a commanding lead in the Salt Lake County portion of her district, with a 1,166-vote advantage. However, much of that is balanced out by Benson’s performance in Tooele County, where he leads by 1,038 votes. He also currently leads Buss in Utah County by 537 votes.
Buss, a nonprofit executive and community advocate from Eagle Mountain, first joined the Utah Senate in December 2025 following the resignation of longtime legislator Daniel Thatcher, who joined the Forward Party earlier that year after leaving the Republican Party. In doing so, Thatcher gave the Forward Party its first elected official in Utah and its first state senator anywhere.
Buss was selected through a “first-of-its-kind” preference poll organized by the Forward Party after Thatcher announced his resignation. Under Utah law, when a state senator resigns, the political party they belong to is responsible for selecting a replacement, whose name is then submitted to the governor for appointment, meaning the party was able to keep the seat.
Rather than limiting the replacement process to party delegates, the Forward Party invited all registered voters in the district to participate in an approval voting poll, allowing voters to support multiple candidates. Buss finished first among five candidates, receiving 625 approvals from 1,324 participating voters, or 47.2 percent.
While the state doesn’t provide a specific figure for how many ballots remain outstanding, Decision Desk HQ estimates that approximately 85 percent of expected votes have been counted. The state is scheduled to certify the results on November 23.
Editorial Note: As these results are still being tabulated, they are subject to change. Specific figures may differ from those originally reported in this article at the time of its publication on Substack.
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