MT-AL: Rob Quist (D) vs. Greg Gianforte (R) vs. Mark Wicks (L), May 25

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@TNVOL: Saying Tester isn't a moderate is just stupid.

When did he say that in this thread?

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I want to get excited but I remember that this is the same polling method that gave Hillary large leads in Kansas. Grain of salt, but this is definitely a race to watch.

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I think Quist winning big would be a result of the combination of Montana oddities (people love Quist, hate Gianforte, etc.) and national discontent with the Republicans.

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The regional divide is so large as to be unbelievable.  In the 2008 presidential election, the difference between the West and East was about 10 points.  In the 2012 presidential election, it was 12.  A 36 (raw) or 44 (weighted) point difference is way too large.  Small sample sizes leading to large MoEs, terrible Google Surveys methodology or whatever.

What was the sample size of Western vs. Eastern Montana in your poll?

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Very interesting. I obviously think Castro's poll is going to be closer to the actual results, not that Google can tell you much.

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Donald fing Trump is president so I don't see why Bullock couldn't

There is no indication that he's going to run for president, sorry. Not to mention that I don't see him winning a Democratic primary. He'll likely run for Senate instead, the Democrats would be stupid to basically concede that race. Daines is extremely vulnerable, and while some other Democrats could give him a run for his money as well, I think Bullock is the only one who could win (it would be very close, though).

I'm sure there's a reason for this that I've missed, but why wouldn't Schweitzer run for Senate? Sure, he will have been out of office for six years at that point, but one doesn't just waste a politician who got 65% of the vote last time they stood for election...

Presumably the same reason he didn't run in 2014?

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God dammit Luján then. I hope Democrats get in this.

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I'd be really surprised if the DCCC didn't get in here soon as well.

I think you severely underestimate the stupidity of our national party. There were multiple Texas districts that Hillary won where we didn't even field a candidate. If there's anything I have faith in it's they're ability to completely screw up our congressional power.

Only one Texas district.

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In many ways, this special is do or die for the Bernie wing of the Democrats.  This is just about the ideal candidate and the ideal audience if there is any remaining chance to revive the rural left.

Agreed. Montana is the last of the four rural Rocky Mountain states (ID, MT, UT, WY) that the Democrats have any shot at. And that shot is slowly disappearing. It's now or never.

None of those states are majority rural. Utah is 90.6% urban.

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In many ways, this special is do or die for the Bernie wing of the Democrats.  This is just about the ideal candidate and the ideal audience if there is any remaining chance to revive the rural left.

Agreed. Montana is the last of the four rural Rocky Mountain states (ID, MT, UT, WY) that the Democrats have any shot at. And that shot is slowly disappearing. It's now or never.

None of those states are majority rural. Utah is 90.6% urban.

The census bureau definitions include counties that are ridiculously far from the city center in the MSA for rural/urban purposes.  Charlottesville, VA is in the Washington, DC MSA for example.  Utah is almost as dominated by one major urban center as Nevada is, but the other 3 states on that list are clearly considered rural in American culture.

No, the Census Bureau doesn't use MSAs to decide what's urban and what's rural.

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A 12-point gap in a subpar pollster over a month before the election shouldn't be insurmountable.

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Uh, back on topic... While this race doesn't tell us much about 2018 Senate race, it's somewhat of a proxy war between Daines and Tester. Daines is Gianforte's best buddy and encouraged him to run for the special election, and Tester was trying hard to get Quist nominated behind the scenes. So a big Gianforte win/a Quist victory would be pretty disappointing for Tester/Daines, respectively.

Do you think the victor of this race might run for Senate in 2018/2020 (depending on the party)?

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If Quist wins or just comes closer than Ossoff, that will have profound implications for the Bernie strategy vs. the Clinton strategy, particularly if KS-04 ends up closer than GA-06.  In other words, if Ossoff actually is mired in the 30's, it should be taken as an early indication Clinton's massive overperformance in the Sunbelt suburbs was a one-time thing.  The KS and MT races being close would suggest it is possible to get enough rural voters back.

It should be noted that Thompson in KS-04 did terribly in the rural areas. He mostly made up territory for Dems in urban/suburban Wichita. Democrats do need a better rural strategy--with one we may have, in fact, won KS-04. The rural South and Plains, however, are going to continue to be deadzones. If we can consolidate control in the Pacific West and Northeast; make progress in traditionally conservative urban/suburban areas like GA-06, GA-07, TX-32, and TX-07; and hold our own in the rural West and rust belt, that, it seems to me, is the best route to a majority.

This either Hillary OR Bernie strategy stuff is nonsense. It has to be BOTH suburban D-growth areas like Orange County (CA) AND populist ancestrally Democratic areas like rural Minnesota/Wisconsin.

If Quist wins MT-AL, it will show that a populist Sanders-oriented strategy may work. While Thompson was certainly more of a Sanders Democrat, his performance relied more on a Hillary+ coalition than something Sanderseque.

Actually Thompson's swing from Trump in Sedgwick County was almost exactly the same as his swing from Trump in the district as a whole.

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If Quist wins or just comes closer than Ossoff, that will have profound implications for the Bernie strategy vs. the Clinton strategy, particularly if KS-04 ends up closer than GA-06.  In other words, if Ossoff actually is mired in the 30's, it should be taken as an early indication Clinton's massive overperformance in the Sunbelt suburbs was a one-time thing.  The KS and MT races being close would suggest it is possible to get enough rural voters back.

It should be noted that Thompson in KS-04 did terribly in the rural areas. He mostly made up territory for Dems in urban/suburban Wichita. Democrats do need a better rural strategy--with one we may have, in fact, won KS-04. The rural South and Plains, however, are going to continue to be deadzones. If we can consolidate control in the Pacific West and Northeast; make progress in traditionally conservative urban/suburban areas like GA-06, GA-07, TX-32, and TX-07; and hold our own in the rural West and rust belt, that, it seems to me, is the best route to a majority.

This either Hillary OR Bernie strategy stuff is nonsense. It has to be BOTH suburban D-growth areas like Orange County (CA) AND populist ancestrally Democratic areas like rural Minnesota/Wisconsin.

If Quist wins MT-AL, it will show that a populist Sanders-oriented strategy may work. While Thompson was certainly more of a Sanders Democrat, his performance relied more on a Hillary+ coalition than something Sanderseque.

Actually Thompson's swing from Trump in Sedgwick County was almost exactly the same as his swing from Trump in the district as a whole.

Sedgewick county has like 70% of the vote in the district, so it would be very surprising if its swing didn't closely match the overall district's swing.

My point is that he didn't do any worse (compared to Trump) in the rural counties than in Sedgwick.

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If Quist wins or just comes closer than Ossoff, that will have profound implications for the Bernie strategy vs. the Clinton strategy, particularly if KS-04 ends up closer than GA-06.  In other words, if Ossoff actually is mired in the 30's, it should be taken as an early indication Clinton's massive overperformance in the Sunbelt suburbs was a one-time thing.  The KS and MT races being close would suggest it is possible to get enough rural voters back.

It should be noted that Thompson in KS-04 did terribly in the rural areas. He mostly made up territory for Dems in urban/suburban Wichita. Democrats do need a better rural strategy--with one we may have, in fact, won KS-04. The rural South and Plains, however, are going to continue to be deadzones. If we can consolidate control in the Pacific West and Northeast; make progress in traditionally conservative urban/suburban areas like GA-06, GA-07, TX-32, and TX-07; and hold our own in the rural West and rust belt, that, it seems to me, is the best route to a majority.

This either Hillary OR Bernie strategy stuff is nonsense. It has to be BOTH suburban D-growth areas like Orange County (CA) AND populist ancestrally Democratic areas like rural Minnesota/Wisconsin.

If Quist wins MT-AL, it will show that a populist Sanders-oriented strategy may work. While Thompson was certainly more of a Sanders Democrat, his performance relied more on a Hillary+ coalition than something Sanderseque.

Actually Thompson's swing from Trump in Sedgwick County was almost exactly the same as his swing from Trump in the district as a whole.

Sedgewick county has like 70% of the vote in the district, so it would be very surprising if its swing didn't closely match the overall district's swing.

My point is that he didn't do any worse (compared to Trump) in the rural counties than in Sedgwick.

If we look at Dem performance in KS-04, a good point of comparison is the 2014 gubernatorial race. Paul Davis lost Sedgwick. Meanwhile, Brownback did not receive 70% in any county in the district. Estes exceeded 70% of the vote in 10 of the 17 counties in the district. Davis reached 46% in Cowley and 42% in Sumner, compared to 42% and 35%, respectively, for Thompson.

If we go back to Sebelius' gubernatorial campaigns in 2006 and 2012, Thompson bested her 2002 Sedgwick performance and did marginally worse than she did in 2012. But Sebelius did really well in a number of rural counties, receiving well over 50% in Pratt and Cowley both years.

Clinton underperformed typical Democratic performance in rural counties. A more-or-less uniform swing for Thompson (and presumably other Dems in upcoming midterms/specials) on Clinton's performance indicates a continuation of the Clinton-Trump voting pattern.

This is disappointing because Dems would hope to see a swing in rural areas back to Dems that is STRONGER than the swing in urban/suburban areas where Hillary tended to hold closer to (or even do better than) typical Dem performance.

I hope that Dems can figure out how to win some of these ancestral Dem voters back... a left-wing coalition reliant on wealthy, well-educated suburbanites doesn't seem sustainable...

Now that's a fair point.

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I'm feeling slightly better about Quist now than I was yesterday.

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An interesting thing to watch in this race will be the East-West divide. Basically all GCS polls so far have shown the gap to be unbelievably high (sometimes even more than 40 points), with Quist leading in the Western part of the state and Gianforte in the East. I doubt it will be that dramatic on election day, but we'll see.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the early returns are skewed toward Democrats. So please... don't freak out when Quist leads 55-40 with 5% in. Oh wait, this is Atlas, why am I even saying this.

Given that it's an entire state, with some very unpopulated counties, we should get some full county totals relatively early in the night, which should help us make an educated guess as to how the race is going (although again, we need to watch out for the East-West divide).

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Eh, Emerson can probably be ignored.

  Lets assume the Emerson poll is somewhat off and Gianforte is in fact ahead in the high single digits. Shouldn't the race be closer than this based on what we've seen in Georgia and Kansas?

In Kansas Brownback has a 15% approval rating and the Democrats dumped millions into georgia only to match Clinton's performance

Matching Clinton is impressive considering that it's always been a more Republican district downballot.

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If the Emerson poll is close to being right, it really would put a big hole in claims that Bernie would have somehow done dramatically better than Hillary in places like Montana.

Why don't you donate to Gianforte then if you're so intent on relitigating the primaries.

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   You'd think there would be more polls of this race as its pretty easy to poll the district since its the whole state.

Fun fact, it's the most populous congressional district in the country.

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I have a hard time seeing that make a big difference, but I don't know.

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Montana Democrat Rob Quist Is Regular Performer at Nudist Resort
Free Beacon/Brent Scher

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More at the link, including a link to some pictures that I would not dare post here.

I'm not sure how much of a scandal this would be in a state like Montana.  Utah, for sure.  But Montana?

Montana is one of the more socially libertarian states, so, maybe not?

I don't know though, it sure does play into the hippy narrative quite well.

Not all social libertarians (myself included) are that naked guy at the 2016 Libertarian National Convention.

It's clearly not a religious right place like Alabama, but I wouldn't call it socially left-wing like Hollywood. I won't pretend to be an expert, but I'd imagine that Western Montana is more conservative socially than fiscally (plus some parts, like Missoula, aren't even conservative at all), and Eastern Montana is more fiscally conservative than socially conservative. The west/east divide is pretty big.

Of course, there are also states like Nevada and New Hampshire that are super pro-choice yet still elect solid pro-lifers to many high offices, including US Senate.

Wait, so Montana is like a reverse Ukraine!?!?!?!?

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With regard to Emerson, here is a poll from February saying Americans trust Trump more than they trust the media.  Take that as you will.

but if you ask them SPECIFIC media sources, every poll has shown that Americans trust CNN more than Trump, even the failin' New York Times more than Trump. If you ask them about "the media", people think of their own ghoulish impressions of it (even from a left perspective) and pick Trump.

They also didn't ask people to pick one or the other. I mean, I wouldn't say I really trust either, but if forced to choose, I'd obviously say the media is more truthful.

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"We don't wanna give him money because it'll nationalize the race" is such a cop out.

Except they are giving him money?

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The "Wichita had a much bigger anti-Trump backlash than the rest of the district" thing is basically a myth.