MT-SEN 2020: Time for Bullock?

[Technocracy Timmy]

FL is a swing state, Scott spent enormous sums of money to get Florida to behave normally in a bad election year. New Hampshire is as someone has repeatedly tried to pound into my head a blue state.

Everything else aside, Florida has a stubborn Republican lean. I don't think the reason for that this year was Scott's money either. He spent lavishly in 2010 and 2014 and yielded similar results. I'm not sure it's the best example for this question.

Well Florida is on average only a couple points to the right of the nation. Montana was 9–10 points to the right in 08’, 17 points to the right in 2012, and 22 points to the right in 2016.

Even Tester won by only 3 in a D+8/9 year. Daines is clearly favored.

[Technocracy Timmy]

This isn't anything like Tennessee which was obviously never anything besides safe R, but Daines is still favored simply because in this age of polarization it's going to be extremely tough for Bullock to overcome the fact that Trump is going to win the state by double digits. Lean R.

Yeah Lean R is a good rating this early on.

TN was 52% white evangelical whereas Montana is only 28%. Huge difference in terms of their Republican floors.

[Technocracy Timmy]

This isn't anything like Tennessee which was obviously never anything besides safe R, but Daines is still favored simply because in this age of polarization it's going to be extremely tough for Bullock to overcome the fact that Trump is going to win the state by double digits. Lean R.

He did it in 2016...

Yeah but generally gubernatorials are less polarizing than federal races. It’s why Justice and Scott did so well in 2016 despite their state voting heavily for the opposite party for president. Bullock only won by 3.8 points too.

I know people will bring up Scott in Florida but there’s plenty of counter-examples to him in the past couple decades.

[Technocracy Timmy]

This isn't anything like Tennessee which was obviously never anything besides safe R, but Daines is still favored simply because in this age of polarization it's going to be extremely tough for Bullock to overcome the fact that Trump is going to win the state by double digits. Lean R.

Yeah Lean R is a good rating this early on.

TN was 52% white evangelical whereas Montana is only 28%. Huge difference in terms of their Republican floors.

Republican base is less evangelical dependent out west.

True though compared to TN-senate this year, MT-senate has a higher Dem floor. They’re not as psychotically republican as the Deep South.   

[Technocracy Timmy]

Maybe Atlas is right and Daines is really heavily favored and I know nothing about my state's politics, but given this forum's (poor) track record when it comes to predicting Montana elections I’ll happily stick with my prediction. Underestimate Bullock/MT Dems to your heart's content, Republicans, but don’t say you weren’t warned when the first poll of this race shows Bullock up by 8 points or something like that.

I’m far from a Democratic hack and I still think this race is a Toss-up. If there’s a Democratic tidal wave like everyone here seems to think, it will hit pretty much every state. There’s a lot of uncertainty in this race, and I’m certainly not going to make the mistake of trusting the same people who unironically told me that AL-SEN 2017 was Safe R, sorry. Could Blackburn win by a lot? Absolutely, but if she does, there’s no way Democrats are holding states like MO or IN, winning MT/WV by double digits, or making TX competitive, etc., and more likely that the Democratic "wave" will be a "ripple" instead. Senate race outcomes are highly correlated with one another, they don’t occur in a vacuum.

The demogaphics for TN (60%ish white evangelical voting population, very white Dixie state, etc) are infinitely worse for Democrats than in states like MO, IN, TX, etc. Seeing MO and IN decided by squeakers while TN votes 8 points for Blackburn is well within the cards.

We’re talking about a candidate who swept every county in 2006 and won by 39 points in said state, when demographics were slightly better for Dems but still very unfavorable. He has the adventage of being able to tap into a reservoir of residual goodwill/nostalgia and is uniquely suited to appeal to high propensity and center-right voters who are fine with Bill Lee but just can’t bring themselves to vote for a "shrill extremist/lunatic" over their Phil Bredesen.

I guess we’ll see on Tuesday, but I guarantee you if Blackburn actually wins by double digits on election night, then Democrats will have a lot bigger problems to worry about than this race.

Is your logic about Montana seriously any different than these arguments you made prior to Bredesen getting completely crushed on Election Day as Dems would go on to win the House vote by 8-9 points?

I don’t know why you’re so unwilling to accept that polarization in senate races is a very real thing since you clearly got egg on your face about Heidi’s retail politics and Bredi’s 39 point 2006 governor win.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Remember when MT Treasurer spent months and months telling us all that Heitkamp is favored and will easily win because of retail politics (TM).

Sorry to say MT Treasurer, but you aren't as intelligent as you think. You can write a lot of posts but that doesn't mean what you say will come true. Idk why you are still talking so confidently when ND and NH proved you massively wrong.

Projecting a little too much here, no? Judging from your posting history, I don’t think you’re in the position to rebuke other posters for their rude, smug, and pretentious behavior, but I digress. I’m not talking "confidently" at all, all I’m saying is that it would be foolish to declare Bullock DOA, and if people ridicule me for my supposedly "delusional" Toss-up or Tilt D rating, I have the right to respond to that. The only ones talking "confidently" are the same people who told me that AL was Safe R, that WV-GOV was Safe R, that Hyde-Smith was going to easily win by double digits, etc. and are now saying that Bullock couldn’t possibly beat Daines in 2020, that Jim Hood couldn’t possibly win a gubernatorial race in MS because of "polarization" (which has essentially become a handy but ridiculously overused and nebulous buzzword), etc.

Yeah, you’re absolutely right, I was wrong about TN, ND (although I certainly wasn’t the only one who overestimated Heitkamp, and in case you couldn’t tell, many of my posts about ND-SEN were exaggerated, especially the retail politics part) and NH (2018 more so than 2016). Congrats! I’ll still readily admit that I’m conceited enough to believe that I know a little more about Montana than any other state, and at least my Bullock +3 (2016), Gianforte +6 (2017), and Tester +3 (2018) predictions weren’t all that bad. I also never said that Bullock (assuming he runs, of course) will make this an automatic pick-up for Democrats, but Toss-up is definitely a fair rating and not one people should be ridiculed for. Like it or not, everyone's entitled to their own ratings and predictions, so if you don’t like my posts, put me on ignore instead of making snarky posts like that.

I’m like 90% sure DTC was trolling you.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Maybe Atlas is right and Daines is really heavily favored and I know nothing about my state's politics, but given this forum's (poor) track record when it comes to predicting Montana elections I’ll happily stick with my prediction. Underestimate Bullock/MT Dems to your heart's content, Republicans, but don’t say you weren’t warned when the first poll of this race shows Bullock up by 8 points or something like that.

I’m far from a Democratic hack and I still think this race is a Toss-up. If there’s a Democratic tidal wave like everyone here seems to think, it will hit pretty much every state. There’s a lot of uncertainty in this race, and I’m certainly not going to make the mistake of trusting the same people who unironically told me that AL-SEN 2017 was Safe R, sorry. Could Blackburn win by a lot? Absolutely, but if she does, there’s no way Democrats are holding states like MO or IN, winning MT/WV by double digits, or making TX competitive, etc., and more likely that the Democratic "wave" will be a "ripple" instead. Senate race outcomes are highly correlated with one another, they don’t occur in a vacuum.

The demogaphics for TN (60%ish white evangelical voting population, very white Dixie state, etc) are infinitely worse for Democrats than in states like MO, IN, TX, etc. Seeing MO and IN decided by squeakers while TN votes 8 points for Blackburn is well within the cards.

We’re talking about a candidate who swept every county in 2006 and won by 39 points in said state, when demographics were slightly better for Dems but still very unfavorable. He has the adventage of being able to tap into a reservoir of residual goodwill/nostalgia and is uniquely suited to appeal to high propensity and center-right voters who are fine with Bill Lee but just can’t bring themselves to vote for a "shrill extremist/lunatic" over their Phil Bredesen.

I guess we’ll see on Tuesday, but I guarantee you if Blackburn actually wins by double digits on election night, then Democrats will have a lot bigger problems to worry about than this race.

Is your logic about Montana seriously any different than these arguments you made prior to Bredesen getting completely crushed on Election Day as Dems would go on to win the House vote by 8-9 points?

I don’t know why you’re so unwilling to accept that polarization in senate races is a very real thing since you clearly got egg on your face about Heidi’s retail politics and Bredi’s 39 point 2006 governor win.

I think that, aside from the Tossup rating, IndyRep's analysis was spot on, especially the bolded part (he misjudged TX, like most of us, maybe because we underestimated the strength of the D trend there). And, since he didn't deny the possibility of a big Blackburn win, I'm not sure what you're suggesting.

Idk maybe if he admitted that Blackburn winning by double digits (which she did quite easily) meant that Dems were in much bigger trouble than in TN (and they were at least in the senate) then maybe Bullock is in bigger trouble than simply having a 50% chance like he’s suggesting right now?

Just a thought.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Polarization is high, but Montana isn't quite comparable to North Dakota or Tennessee, since it's much less red, and is even more competitive at the statewide level. Assuming Bullock is in, this is definitely a race to watch and certainly has potential to flip, but I think calling it more likely to flip than AZ/NC might be jumping the gun a bit, since Trump could lose both of those states (or even conceivably GA or *IOWA*, yes, I went there ) if he's having a bad night, but there's no way he's going to come close to losing Montana even in a Democratic wave. So Bullock still has to win over a significant number of Trump voters, which is increasingly hard to do.

This is what I think as well. Trump losing nationally by 6-8 points could easily gain us states like GA/NC/AZ and possibly IA while Bullock still comes up just short.

Dems need to go where the most persuadable voters are first.

[Technocracy Timmy]

MT has a large amount of persuadable voters.....

The future of the Democratic Party are educated suburbanites, not rural white trash kiddo.

Call me when the hipsters turn Montana into another Colorado.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I've actually reconciled myself to conceding that IceSpear et al. are entirely correct about the key facts of the urban/rural polarization going on. My opposition to "the 'racist hicks' narrative" is basically a tone argument combined with a compassion argument and a desire not to see this realignment carried to its logical extreme if that's possible to avoid any more. It's foolish to deny that non-metropolitan parts of the country in general are becoming rabidly partisan Republican strongholds, and only marginally less foolish to deny that this is due in large part to "identity" issues.

[Technocracy Timmy]

I beg to differ a bit here; although Bredesen maintained a lead for many months, I always had a feeling that his Republican-lite campaign might turn out to be his Achilles' heel, and his support for Kavanaugh was probably the final nail in the coffin for a shellacking (remember that this move cost him a lot of potential support).

Potential support from who exactly? Tennessee is literally the most white evangelical state in America and was still majority white evangelical in 2014.

The only time he won statewide was in a less polarized era (2002-2006) for a less polarizing position (Governor) with a less polarizing set of policy initiatives for Tennessee (he was a fairly conservative Democrat). Furthermore, Bredesen made huge gains over Obama 2008 in all of the cities and most of the suburbs. Guess where he underperformed Obama 2008? Rural areas:

   


And if you genuinely believe that rural TN Dixiecrats that held their nose for Obama in 2008 and switched to Blackburn 10 years later (not including those that just died) were on track to vote for Bredesen but changed their minds because he was too supportive of a conservative Justice well...there’s nothing I can do to convince you otherwise.