Rate Montana for Senate

[MT Treasurer]

This is gonna be a fun thread.

[MT Treasurer]

Bullock outraised Daines in the first half of the second quarter:

Bullock raised about $2.4 million in the first half of the second quarter and has about $4.1 million in the bank, according to his campaign’s latest filing with the Federal Election Commission.

Daines raised $1.3 million and has a war chest of $5.8 million.

Also:

The top Senate GOP super PAC announced this week it is reserving over $10 million in airtime in Montana to boost Daines, a sign Republicans view the race as competitive.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499224-bullock-outraises-daines-in-montana-senate-race

[MT Treasurer]

It's a toss up race!

I agree. I think this is going to be one of the last Senate races called (maybe even the last race with the exception of the GA seat/-s), so we can prepare for an all-nighter even if the presidential race is called early.

The earliest indicator of who is winning the race will be (as always) the Republican margin in Yellowstone County (Billings area + outskirts). If it’s as close as it was in 2018-SEN or closer, Daines can start packing his bags. If Bullock’s winning it, the race is beyond over.

[MT Treasurer]

I know Atlas already offers plenty of it, but if anyone is eager to absorb even more sophisticated Montana "analysis", here you go. In today's riveting episode of Understanding the Nuances of Montana Politics, "Campaigns with Craig" objectively, carefully, and elaborately analyzes the Montana Senate race and graciously lets us in on the reasons why the idea of Steve Bullock standing a chance in MT-SEN 2020 is... "Bollocks" (how original!). Charlie Cook's heir, folks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJH_fk3cS-U

The real gems start at 9:00, you can skip the other parts. 99% sure he’s an Atlas poster.

[MT Treasurer]

^Yeah, "Bullock is the next Bredesen" is a popular hot take on YouTube/Twitter/PredictIt/etc. (and even on this forum to some extent). It’s baffling that anyone would be clueless enough to make such a comparison, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.

[MT Treasurer]

Daines won by 10 POINTS. Bullock did 1 point better than Bredesen in a state that is better for Democrats. I was right the entire time! This forum was convinced this was a toss-up race and that it was super different from other red state senate races in the past, with the help of MT Treasurer mocking and demeaning those that said this wasn't going to be a toss-up.

First of all, there are still some votes left to be counted, so his margin will probably shrink a little. Second, Daines and the Republicans also had to put in A TON of effort to win this convincingly, so it’s not like this was a seat that he always could/should have taken for granted. I get that you’re on your ‘I was right, everyone else was wrong/delusional/in a bubble’ rampage right now, though, so I’ll leave it at that (I’m not actually going to bump/mock some of your ridiculous predictions/insults because, believe it or not, I have better things to do).

I’m actually really glad we’ll probably end up holding the Senate (depending on how the two GA runoffs go). Check out my ‘delusional’ final Atlas Senate prediction.

[MT Treasurer]

^Being lectured on ‘condescending’ and ‘toxic’ posting style from you is quite something considering how you’ve behaved in the last 24 hours and even well before the election.

Also:

Yeah, of all my screw-ups this year, KS-SEN (I had Bollier losing, but thought it would be relatively close) and Miami-Dade County (didn’t foresee the dramatic swing at the presidential level and thought Ds would hold easily FL-26 and FL-27) were probably the biggest ones.

Feel free to mock this prediction as long as you want.

I’ll gladly admit that I was wrong about several races and you can bump hundreds of my posts/predictions and ridicule them if it makes you feel better. I could mock you for predicting that GA was ‘Likely R’, that Trump would win reelection (he may still, but it’s very, very unlikely), that Tester would win by high single digits (you predicted this a few months before the 2018 election and were just as wrong about that race as I was about this year's Senate race), but again, I don’t care.

Also, my ‘pessimism’ about red states has more to do with warranted concerns after a series of Republican underperformances (including in 2018, when the party underperformed the partisan baseline of most states rather dramatically, which you conveniently seem to ignore) and a general tendency to keep my expectations/faith in voters as low as possible. I was mostly wrong on the margins, not so much on the overall winner.