Wow, I didn’t even notice this because of those MI/NC stunners. Anyway, Tossup race remains Tossup, Emerson meme poll remains Emerson meme poll. Note that Bullock is just as close to 50% in this one as he was in the Data of Progress poll (which also pegged his support at 48%). The actual topline is completely believable, although it’s really baffling that there’s virtually no gender gap in this survey (they’re tied among women, Bullock holds a 1-point edge among men), which is very different from everything else I’ve seen. In any case:
I think we can fend off Bullock at around that 48% mark, but it’ll be close and Daines can thank God there’s no Libertarian on the ballot.
^I’m sticking to this, but it’ll be incredibly, incredibly frustrating to see people chalk up the outcome to “polarization” and “partisanship” if Daines wins this race because many of you really don’t realize what kind of Herculean effort it took to keep pace with Bullock and the MDP/national Democratic investments in this race. The party has pretty much thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Bullock and Daines has been running a very solid campaign in the last four months or so (including doing a much better job of nationalizing the race than Rosendale), so if Bullock ekes it out against an inoffensive and competent Republican incumbent with no Libertarian on the ballot in spite of his failure of a presidential bid/initial resistance to run for Senate which has been used against him extensively, it’ll be a stunning testament to the state’s idiosyncratic nature, which is admittedly hard for many ‘outsiders’ to comprehend.
There’s a lot to be said about the strength of the Montana Democratic Party and we’ve already touched upon most of the reasons behind it (growing urbanization and increasing influence of tech/health care sectors, a wave of liberal transplants which has outpaced previous R-friendly migration patterns in the Flathead Valley and parts of Yellowstone County/Eastern Montana, alignments between union interests and state politics, a fairly sizable college-educated and Native American vote, a certain independent-minded spirit which tends to be overstated but shouldn’t be underestimated, stellar Democratic GOTV operations, comparatively strong Libertarian support which largely works to the detriment of the GOP, Republican intra-party fights, a closely contested senior vote which has been friendlier to Democrats than in neighboring states, #retail politics, etc.), but I’ve always held the belief that an overlooked piece of the puzzle is the cultural and emotional attachment of people to place and the state's isolated geography, which just makes it much more difficult to nationalize races here than in almost any other Republican-leaning state. It’s easier to obfuscate the national implications of a Senate race and center your campaign on issues which have saved many a Democrat's bacon in the past (especially the notorious trifecta of health care, public lands conservation, and consumer protection) even if it entails running as a somewhat progressive Democrat when the line between gubernatorial/state and Senate/federal races is so blurred because the entire state feels like a separate country and the guy who currently governs you (Bullock) might as well be your president. I can’t prove this and I’m only speaking from personal experience here, but growing up or residing in MT sometimes feels like a completely unique ‘spiritual’ experience which you don’t really get from other parts of the country, as silly as it may sound.
Montana Democrats are extremely skilled at meticulously putting together a winning coalition and systematically blocking any potential Republican path even if it means spending weeks to figure out the tiniest, most isolated county possible (Daines should be more worried about a Bullock overperformance in Yellowstone County/the Billings area, which I also expect to swing hard D at the presidential level and where Democratic gains are likely to creep into the outskirts this year). The party also tends to catch Republicans by surprise by shifting the narrative in the final weeks of the campaign in favor of winning issues of the past, so it’s important for Daines to stay on message and avoid falling asleep at the wheel at this late stage of the race. As I predicted a few months ago, Democrats are trying their best to make pre-existing conditions/health care protections the number one issue in this campaign (I’ve seen a ton of those ads recently), but I think Daines is smart enough not to take the bait – he’s also handled public lands better than Rosendale. When all is said and done, I expect the colossal Republican efforts to keep defections as low as possible and to continuously nationalize the race as well as the absence of a Libertarian candidate to keep the seat in Republican hands by 2-3 points, but no one should be surprised by a Bullock win.
I take issue with the characterization of Montana as “unpolarized”, though – the state has a large pool of conservative voters of all ideological stripes (including an overlooked cohort of socially Republican/Evangelical voters, but really just a surprisingly diverse GOP base in general) who won’t be very happy about Bullock heading to Washington, but such is politics. Also, the polls GeneralMcArthur is citing were daily 50-state SurveyMonkey polls which were a complete disaster across the board — actual reputable polls (Mason-Dixon and to a lesser extent MSU Billings) showed Bullock ahead (albeit by very different margins), and the general consensus was always that Bullock was a clear favorite in the race.
