I think it'll end up Daines +5-10. Of course anybody who doesn't believe it's a pure toss-up is laughed at or mocked. It's going to be very delicious to see if that actually ends up the case. I could be wrong and revise if we get closer to election day, but given history I don't think it makes sense for Daines to lose unless it's a blue tidal wave.
There's an obligatory "Bullock =/ Bredesen" comment but it's actually going to be interesting to see how much Bullock can overperform relative to Bredesen. Contra to the narrative spun after the election, Bredesen was a very strong candidate. He just couldn't pull it off in staunchly Republican Tennesee. Bullock will need to overperform Biden by a 15 point margin to match Bredesen's overperformance of Clinton (9 point margin to match the R house vote in 2018), which may mean outright winning.
Democrats haven’t won a senate race in TN for about 30 years.
What’s the track record in Montana in that time period?
Completely irrelevant. There were loads of people on here convinced Bredesen was going to win, many polls that had him up even outside the margin of error. I was one of very few people along with IceSpear stressing that it was a tease and it was always at least Lean R (I had it at Likely R). It won't matter with this one though, people will be convinced until the very end that Montana is "different" and therefore any comparisons or contrasts are not valid. We'll just have to wait until after the election.
I can play at this game too though When was the last time a Republican incumbent lost re-election in a state as red as Montana? It hasn't happened since 2008, when Ted Stevens lost his seat for obvious reasons. Daines is not even unpopular he's just unremarkable.
I agree with this. In a lot of races, the seemingly "best canidate" jumps into the race, and people get way too exited and call teh race a tossup, or even lean in the "best canidate's" favor, with a few polls showing them ahead, and then partisanship wins out. Now, to be fair, Montana is very different from Tennessee, and Democrats proved in 2018 that winning a senate race there was still possible. The Bresden - Bullock comparison isn't a great one since Bresden was not the current governor, and had been removed from state politics for quite a bit, and plus, Tennessee is a larger state with more people to appeal to. Bullock is the incumbent governor and is much more politically relavant in MT, and there's fewer people to appeal to in MT, and MT has much more split ticket voting than TN. I'm considering this race lean R for now, beacuse Daines is still the incumbent who's not super unpopular, and unlike 2018, Rs will actually take this race very seriously. I do think people are being overhyped about Bullock because of 2 iffy polls that showed him ahead. Most likely partisanship will win out in a presidential year. I can think of very few Trump supporters at this point who would split ticket for Bullock, considering part of Trump's message is all about winning, even if it goes against your interests. I'll consider MT likely R on the presidential level for now, and Lean R on the senate level
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