Talk Elections

Tester*(D)- 50%

Rosendale(R)- 43%

https://states.aarp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/AARP-Montana-Voter-Topline-Results-9-2018.pdf

They also polled the house race:

Gianforte*(R)- 46%

Williams(D)- 45%

Edit: Thanks to clarification from AARP, it has been deciphered that the toplines are the actual likely voters, not just voters over 50.

That seems really good for +50s, BUT CAN THEY PLEASE STOP WITH THESE STUPID AGE LIMITED POLLS...

I assume that they mean gun owners over 50 in Garfield County, right?

Gun-owning male Republicans over 50 in Garfield and Petroleum County, yeah. Hard to believe that he’s only ahead by 7, though.

2012 exit poll for Senate:

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Interesting there's not much difference between the age groups in MT.

I think it's fair to say if he's leading by +7 with voters >50, he's leading comfortably overall. Young voters in Montana are arguably the most consistently Democratic age group, so he should do well with them too.

Presumably because older cohorts from MT are of a more Democratic lean historically (at least among native Montanans), and younger people are disproportionately either college students (transplants or otherwise) and/or yuppies looking to be edgy in their living arrangements.

On the surface, MT strikes me as one of these states that doesn't have a large native young population, given its recent growth has likely been fueled by middle-aged outsiders (who, despite their lean toward the GOP, would still be more Democratic than native-born middle-aged Montanans).

I could totally be wrong about all of this

The exit poll for Montana's 2012 presidential race was kind of interesting:

http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/state/MT/president/

30-44: 38% - 57% Romney
40-49: 31% - 66% Romney

Somehow, the 18-29 year olds and 50-64 year olds were the most Democratic, and the 40-49 and 65+ year olds were the most Republican. Some of this could just be due to small sample sizes though. And the partisan imbalance seems more relevant for presidential races rather than other offices.

This is something that should always be kept in mind with exit polls. What makes it worse is the effective MoE of an exit poll is higher even than the sample size by itself would indicate because they only sample a conduct exit polls in a small number of precincts in any given state, and the precincts that they sample can easily end up being weird/non-representative in a variety of ways.

It’s obvious that Tester is leading in this race, but I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from polls of only one demographic, and we certainly can’t infer from this poll that Tester is ahead by double digits. Older voters in MT (and the Dakotas, for that matter) are definitely not as Republican-leaning as their counterparts in other Republican states which don’t have the same long Democratic tradition that Montana has. Unfortunately, there’s basically no exit poll data available for MT, but I’m pretty sure that they were Quist's second-best demographic group, actually.

It’s still not a good poll for Republicans by any means since these people are pretty reliable voters.

Why do middle aged Montanans hate #populism <3?

This seems plausible. I can imagine people over 50 in Montana being more inclined to vote for Tester than those under 50. Similar to CNN exit polls in MN in 2016 showing those younger being more inclined to vote for Trump than some older demographics.

I knew it that in the next poll, Tester would be leading by 7 overall after he announced his vote against Kavanaugh's confirmation, which I guess will cost him conservative and moderate votes he needs to win this race in a red state that Trump won by 21 percentage points in 2016.

Don't worry, this is just a poll of republican officials in garfield county.

This could also be a weird exception, given that the other AARP polls seem to be explicit about being solely 50+.

Wait.

Does this apply to ALL the AARP polls?

Whoops, seems like this is actually the real top. Well, that means two things.

1. AARP sucks at disclosing what the poll is actually about

2. The MT house seat is a tossup, and the senate seat is lean D

I shall edit the top for that, but I will keep the name

New Poll: Montana Senator by Benenson Strategy Group on 2018-09-16 (https://uselectionatlas.org/POLLS/SENATE/2018/polls.php?action=indpoll&id=30120180916273)

Summary: D: 50%, R: 43%, U: 5%

Poll Source URL: Full Poll Details (https://states.aarp.org/aarp-poll-findings-show-montana-50-plus-voters-united-in-concern-over-jobs-the-economy-and-health-care/aarp-montana-voter-topline-results-9-2018/)

I'm curious about this too.

Guys, I think Populistana might be a blue state now. It's Happening!

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So, much for this race being competitive

Well, it sure means that if you blindly trust one poll.

I mean, its this, or Gravis, and I would rather put my stock here, you know.

Worth noting that the CEO of the group that conducted this poll (Joel Benenson) was the chief strategist of Clinton's presidential campaign and also worked for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Just a minor detail.

Raygun and the militia movement clearly had an effect.

My opinion:

MT-Sen: Lean D->Lean D
MT-AL (house): Likely R->Lean R