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

[McGovernForPrez]

On the topic of turnout, doesn't the outcome of the mail-in ballot scandal affect that partially. If they do choose to use them that might give Democrats a better turnout edge.

[McGovernForPrez]

On the topic of turnout, doesn't the outcome of the mail-in ballot scandal affect that partially. If they do choose to use them that might give Democrats a better turnout edge.

I'm weighting the results to 2014 Montana actual voters and 2014 Montana registered voters, as reported by the November 2014 Census Population Survey.  So far, there isn't much of difference between using either metric - about two points in the most recent data dump.  167 of the expected 500+ respondents have responded so far.  105 of them didn't choose the "I'm not likely to vote" option.  The overall results so far are... interesting.

Completely random guess: Wicks the Libertarian is doing unusually well and Quist is leading.

I wouldn't be surprised. It doesn't seem like Montanans particularly like Gianforte. Running in two back to back elections just seems desperate. The public lands issue might have even caused a major backlash there against Republicans.

[McGovernForPrez]

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.

[McGovernForPrez]

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.

I mean the TX-32 should've also had a candidate. It's a majority minority district and we let the Republicans have it for free. Even Green party got 10% of the vote there. It's utterly embarassing.

[McGovernForPrez]

Our Revolution endorses Rob Quist (& James Thompson) for Congress. Loads of money coming from Bernie's email list.

MT-AL is a winnable seat with a good candidate who can hold a possibly red seat for many number of years. Dems should go all out for this & GA. I remember when Dems kept delaying & cancelling ad buys for Feingold when they though he was too strong/wouldn't need (& spend Millions in Florida wasted on a poor Murphy in an expensive market where Rubio was leading consistently & comfortably). This was while Hillary didn't do a single rally for Russ & Russ was getting slaughtered in TV ads from the Koch Brothers, NRA & other groups.

This is the saddest, most frustrating, most infuriating thing on this forum. I miss Russ Feingold so much

Russ was the man. It's so sad he failed. The man behind one of the better campaign finance reform acts defeated by Ron ing Johnson.

[McGovernForPrez]

Our Revolution endorses Rob Quist (& James Thompson) for Congress. Loads of money coming from Bernie's email list.

MT-AL is a winnable seat with a good candidate who can hold a possibly red seat for many number of years. Dems should go all out for this & GA. I remember when Dems kept delaying & cancelling ad buys for Feingold when they though he was too strong/wouldn't need (& spend Millions in Florida wasted on a poor Murphy in an expensive market where Rubio was leading consistently & comfortably). This was while Hillary didn't do a single rally for Russ & Russ was getting slaughtered in TV ads from the Koch Brothers, NRA & other groups.

This is the saddest, most frustrating, most infuriating thing on this forum. I miss Russ Feingold so much

Russ was the man. It's so sad he failed. The man behind one of the better campaign finance reform acts defeated by Ron ing Johnson.

If the DSCC put some money into his race instead of Florida or NC then he'd probably have won, and we'd be in that much better a position. I'm worried we might not have a Senator as great as him for a while, and because of the DSCC's stupidity his name is now too toxic for a Gubernatorial run

It's like they don't live in the real world. You would've hoped that the Trump presidency would be a wake up call for these people but I'm convinced most of them are too politically inept to do anything about it.

[McGovernForPrez]

Feingold actually won many rural counties which Hilary lost & surprisingly didn't have the same numbers as Hillary had in some urban counties (that's what I read - Not Sure !). Hillary didn't do 1 rally for him to unite her base for her. Wisconsin has a massive GOP infra build by Walker, Ryan & the Kochs.

Feingold lead throughout the race comfortably & that loss was a shocker. It is fair to blame him too, (he did loose twice to Johnson) maybe he didn't run a good campaign, couldn't connect emotionally with local issues.

Dems lost WI for the 1st time in 30 odd years & with any other Dem candidate & Feingold would probably be in the Senate. He was a fantastic Senator & McCain-Feingold was a great achievement.

He lost by a larger margin than her, it was his fault, not hers.  He might have been dragged across the line by others, but by less than 10000 votes.

The only reason Hillary outperformed Russ Feingold had to do with Trump's coattails in the traditionally Democratic regions in Wisconsin, versus Hillary's strength in traditionally republican suburbs. Trump had coattails in parts of the state that Feingold needed to win. Hillary performed much much worse in the traditionally Democratic parts of the region to Feingold but her Suburbanite strategy let her make up some of that gap. The problem with that strategy is it totally screwed down ballot candidates, as most of those voters were still gonna vote for their republican Senator. Hillary knew this when she engaged in this strategy, her hubris was massive.

[McGovernForPrez]

It looks like MT Republicans are currently trying to replay their 2010 card and tie Quist with Nancy Pelosi.

Same with Ossoff in GA-6. I don't know if this has nearly the staying power anymore with her being basically irrelevant now.

I don't think it will, especially with Quist. Since he's allied with the Bernie wing of the party, it'd be hard to make the claim that he's some establishment favorite, especially when he's running against the slimy Gianforte.

[McGovernForPrez]

Gianforte *has* to have saturated the airwaves at this point, right?

Like, everyone who is realistically going to vote in this election has now been hearing about GG in every communications medium for a calendar year.

At this point it's probably more likely to hurt than help him. I know I get sick of seeing campaign ads everywhere I go. I got PTSD when we were getting the damn Scott Brown for NH ads here in MA.

[McGovernForPrez]

750k for someone like Quist isn't a bad haul at all. He'll obviously be outspent by a lot though.

Isn't that a fairly large amount for a congressional race?

[McGovernForPrez]

Quist released his first television ad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c--EsRoiGs&feature=youtu.be

[McGovernForPrez]

Gravis polled the race, and has it at Gianforte +12:

Gianforte 50%
Quist 38%
Wicks 3%
Breck 2%
Uncertain 7%
http://gravismarketing.com/polling-and-market-research/current-montana-polling-3/
1,222 Voters; MoE +-2.9;  Poll Dates ? - It was released today.


Breck is apparently the Green Party candidate.  Did we miss him getting ballot access, or is Gravis polling someone not on the ballot?

There hasn't been any decision yet. It probably won't take much longer to settle this, though. As for the poll itself... thank God finally someone decided to poll this race. The GCS polls were nice, but too D-friendly. I'm also not really buying the results of this poll, honestly. I really don't see Gianforte winning by double digits. Trump's approval numbers look a bit too high, while Bullock's seem a bit too low. Montana is one of the few states where Democratic strength is often underestimated by the polls.

I mean it's Gravis so I wouldn't take them too seriously, especially in a state with polling difficulty as great as Montana has.

[McGovernForPrez]

All-mail special election might be back on the table:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/montana/articles/2017-04-07/governor-uses-veto-pen-to-push-mail-only-voting

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This is why Steve Bullock is the man.

[McGovernForPrez]

I think things will ramp up in this race in late April, early May. Although if (when) Ossoff goes to the runoff, he might continue to suck the energy out of this race.

If Quist wins here then I hope it sends a message to the party that these rural, working-class areas are worth investing in as much as upper-class suburb districts like GA-6.

Hopefully that trend will really pick up in KS-04. I would love to see a revival of western leftwing populism.

[McGovernForPrez]

You are assuming that nationalizing races in blood red Trump states makes sense.  The DCCC coming in will allow Gianforte to credibly tie Quist to San Fran Nan and New York Chuck, who I'm sure aren't that popular in Montana.  Whose to say Thompson wouldn't have lost by a larger margin had the KS-04 race been nationalized more?

But then what is the alternative? Democrats abandon candidates in deeply Republican territory out of fear of it backfiring? I'm sure there are instances where it will be plenty valid, but the 'nationalization' excuse doesn't seem that strong to me. It seems like a good excuse to keep doing what the party said it would stop doing.

No.  The Democratic establishment should quietly support the candidate in other ways, by sending in surrogates that don't have ties to the Democratic establishment (like Sanders), and finding other ways to quietly get them resources behind the scenes.  Share the GOTV apparatus, microtargeting data and donor lists, for example.  Don't get into a situation where your Kansas or Montana candidate can be tied to unlikable characters from San Francisco and New York City.

I agree with this point, but I still feel like the national party can do more in these races. I'm happy Perez sent Quist some staffers, but that Kansas race should've been contested more. The fact that the DCCC chair didn't know there was an election going on Montana is absolutely horrifying. That suggests to us that they aren't even thinking about how they can help candidates.

[McGovernForPrez]

Google Consumer Survey poll, April 6-8, Sample size: 333, MoE: 5.4%

45.4% Rob Quist (D)
43.5% Greg Gianforte (R)
11.1% Mark Wicks (L)

Link.

Woah, that's a really high libertarian vote percentage.

Not surprising since the sample size is so small. I wouldn't be surprised if a libertarian got that much since this is Montana.

[McGovernForPrez]

Emerson is a weird poll, like really weird, but it's not good.  The good news I guess is that it seems dems have been over performing their polling, but probably not enough to overcome high single digit leads. 

Yeah.  Emerson provided the raw data, along with the cross-tabs.  Assuming Age Group 1 are the 18-34s, they polled a whopping 18 LVs out of the 648 or so respondents (after weighting).  I'm not sure exactly how they weighted, but given that 18-34s represent 123/648 in the presumably weighted cross-tabs, the 18-34s must have a weight of about 7.

So yes, Emerson's poll skewed old.  I think it also skewed heavily Western Montana in the formulation we've been using.  If I've done the county translations right, Western Montana is actually more pro-Gianforte than Eastern Montana in this poll.

Best I can make heads or tails of the Emerson numbers, the raw data was only Gianforte +4 (for the highly likely to votes).  They must have really weighted the data to get to Gianforte+15 out of that.

What were the raw totals for the 18-34 age group? Considering they only polled 18 voters they probably had an unrepresentative sample to begin with.

[McGovernForPrez]

What were the raw totals for the 18-34 age group? Considering they only polled 18 voters they probably had an unrepresentative sample to begin with.

9-6 Gianforte, with 3 Undecideds.

To be fair, even my recent Google Survey with more younger voters showed Gianforte up among at least the 18-24s.  And I don't like unskewing polls.  Emerson's polls almost always skew old because I think they just poll landlines.  Yet they had a decent track record in 2016, despite their methodological shortcomings.

Normally I don't like unskewing polls either, but Emerson is a crap tier pollster so I don't feel bad questioning their samples.

[McGovernForPrez]

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

Strict polling laws and a sparse population probably makes it difficult to poll.

[McGovernForPrez]

New Gravis poll coming soon:

Gravis Marketing‏ @GravisMarketing
Montana Poll being released on Monday will show @RobQuistforMT  gaining ground.

https://twitter.com/GravisMarketing/status/860859344526729216

Man AHCA could be game changer

I would imagine so. Some provisions in the bill were perfect for Dems to campaign on. XYZ Representative doesn't want rape victims to get access to adequate healthcare. Vote for Mr.Democrat to protect you're right to healthcare.

[McGovernForPrez]

Cant Betwixt the Quist!

Can't Twist the Quist sounds better IMO.

[McGovernForPrez]

When is the pending Gravis poll supposed to be released?

When they think up some numbers to use.

Remember when Gravis put Bernie within like 5 points of winning Maryland LMAO. Can't believe they get paid to do this.

[McGovernForPrez]

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https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/866729188484624385

This has been tossup all along. Had Quist ran a better campaign I would say lean D, but he was weaker than I expected and Pianoforte actually showed and campaigned decently. Feeling optimistic about this seat though. I really do like Quist.

[McGovernForPrez]

4 hours later.

I think something is fishy here.

They probably realized they didn't have an actual poll in the field and just put it out now, because they promised everybody a poll. Gravis is a straight up meme tier polling firm and it's great.

[McGovernForPrez]

My Google Survey is complete.   The poll is available here, along with my weighting spreadsheet with weighted crosstabs.

573 total respondents were polled from May 21-23.  Of the 573, 385 chose a candidate.  The question asked was:

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Weighted by Age and Sex (to the November 2014 CPS for actual voters) and Region (West vs. East), the Results were:

Quist 54%
Gianforte 39%
Wicks 7%

Or Quist +15.

Raw, it was Quist+14.  Simple Weighted by only sex and age, like we've done for other polls this cycle, it was Quist +16.

As usual for our Google Surveys, the poll showed a big East/West Divide.  Western Montanans (n=181) preferred Quist by 32 points (weighted by age, sex and region and raw).  Eastern Montanans (n=134) picked Gianforte by 4 (5 raw).

Recall that I've split Eastern and Western Montana this way in our Google Polling:


There is a gender gap, with men supporting Quist by 12 (weighted)/7 (raw), and women supporting Quist by 23 (weighted)/26 (raw).  Every age group except 45-54 year olds backed Quist.  And, as in other Google Polls, there is a huge Suburban/Rural gap, with suburban voters backing Quist by 24/21, and rurals only going Quist by 1/3.  Rural voters made up 37% of the weighted and raw samples.

More, perhaps, to come.  But this poll looks like as big an outlier as Gravis', unfortunately.  Average the two polls together, and we might be on to something.

Can Quist really win Flathead County

If anybody can it's him. It's his home county.