Who will do better in 2024?

[mtvoter]

Who will do better in 2024?

[CookieDamage]

Sherrod Brown. Ohio isn't as red as MT. Trump or any other Republican will also help the GOP Sen candidate in MT, and since it's like twice as red as Ohio, I give the higher chance of losing to Tester. Both are underdogs imo.

[MT Treasurer]

This mostly depends on the Republican opponent/type of campaign run against Tester, who overall remains a more skilled politician than Brown with a track record of outperforming the top of the ticket/state's partisan lean substantially, which is why I think it will take a more sustained and disciplined effort to deconstruct Tester's brand than to dismantle Brown's (to the extent that Brown is even still viewed all that differently from "generic" D — I think this is seriously exaggerated on here, and Brown himself is doing his best to diminish such strengths). The range of likely outcomes in OH (4- to 6-point loss for Brown), assuming a more or less neutral year, strikes me as a lot more predictable and 'fixed' than the realistic scenarios in Montana, which range anywhere from a 3-point win for Tester to a Daines (2020)-type GOP sweep.

"Ohio isn’t as red as MT" is hardly a more convincing argument than "Collins will lose before Tillis because NC isn’t as blue as ME" — there are still exceptions to PVI & the top of the ticket determining what transpires in Senate races, and it’s usually small states like ME/MT/WV that are most likely to defy those patterns.

Tester is also in a better position than Bullock in the sense that (a) COVID will almost certainly no longer be an obstacle on the campaign trail (Tester is even more reliant on retail campaigning than other MT Democrats) and restrictions/politicization of the pandemic will no longer be an issue in 2024 (at least in Montana, unless the school boards really go full insane &/or Biden and national Democrats push for new restrictions/vaccine mandates/etc.), (b) he’s not going to give the GOP free and easy ammunition over the course of an already doomed presidential campaign in which he endorses packing the courts, impeaching Trump, etc., (c) Republicans are a lot more likely to get complacent in this race, as it is unlikely to decide control of the Senate and there will be many other, just as promising pick-up opportunities as MT. Republican strategists may also assume that Tester is either easy to beat/already DOA because he’s "too liberal" or that he’s virtually unbeatable (like in 2018, when they only mounted a half-hearted effort when it was basically too late and he had already defined himself and Rosendale), etc.

That said, Tester certainly has his work cut out for him as well. I hope Daines and Gianforte will play an unusually active role in the Republican campaign, the former hopefully as NRSC chair and the latter ideally (a man can dream) as the candidate himself. We meme about this sometimes, but their takeover of the state party has been very effective and helpful to GOP prospects in the state (coordination and messaging were top notch in 2020).