Perfectly reasonable topline numbers.
People seem to forget sometimes how close MT was in 2008 (McCain only won it by 2.3%).
Although I am still of the opinion that Biden will underperform Obama in the Upper "Grain Belt" regions such as Eastern MT, ND, SD, there are certainly pockets within MT, where Biden will likely overperform (Assuming a National Biden ~ +8% win).
Gallatin County (Bozeman) is one such place, where Trump received only 44% of the vote in '16 vs McCain's 47% in '08.
Missoula County (Missoula) is another place where movement will likely continue in the DEMs direction, even exceeding Obama's 62-35 win.
Lewis & Clark County (Helena) will likely be more akin to Obama-McCain DEM margins.
Yellowstone County (Billings) should be interesting. I could see Biden performing at Obama '08 levels within the City, or possibly a tad better, but losing ground because of rural parts of the County maintaining fairly high levels of support for Trump.
I’d be surprised if Yellowstone didn’t swing as strongly to the left as Gallatin. There’s no way a Democrat can come this close to winning MT without improving substantially over Clinton's 2016 result in that county, including the outskirts. Yellowstone is usually 5-8 points more Republican than the entire state, not more than that.
Fair point, and I was trying to hedge my bet a bit on Yellowstone, at the Presidential Level.
Sure it was a 51.3% McCain vs 45.3% Obama County in '08, with 70.7k PRES TV.
Interestingly enough, it was a 58.1% Trump vs 31.5% HRC County in '16 with 70.5k TV, meaning there were actually fewer total voters between '08 and '16, despite a significantly larger increase in population within the County, as well as the City of Billings.
So in 2018, Tester (D) bagged 46.5% of the vote vs Rosendale's 50.1%, with a whopping 69.3k TV in an off-year election!
Naturally, this is a good sign for DEM-SEN 2020 prospects.
Meanwhile the population of Billings, Montana has jumped up dramatically from 104k in '08 to 109k in '16 and is projected to hit 111k in 2020.
https://www.opendatanetwork.com/entity/1600000US3006550/Billings_MT/demographics.population.change?year=2018https://billingsgazette.com/news/local/government-and-politics/how-where-and-how-fast-will-billings-grow/article_031208af-972e-5b63-b28b-31989942c041.htmlThe numbers from the City of Billings look something like the following:
2008: Obama (47.2%) vs McCain (50.2%) +3.0% with 54.1k TV
2016 is a bit murkier with split-precincts:
Split and Non-Split combined:
Trump: (53.6%) vs HRC (35.2%) +20.4% R with 49.3k TV.
Looks pretty clear if Biden can churn out turnout and enthusiasm and Turnout in 2020, plus assuming he sweeps the 3rd Party Votes, Yellowstone County could
potentially flip hard.
So... yeah a bit of a wild card out here, and I took a bit of a safety because of the variables.
