Montana is a tough state to figure out. Trump won by 20+ points and yet they have a Democratic Governor and Senator. Almost all of the county clerks wanted to have an all mail-in special election but the Republicans said that too many Democrats would vote so they crushed that idea.
When it comes to analyzing the early vote, I always turn to Michael McDonald from Electproject.org to get his take. Almost all the early vote is in and here’s what he has to say.
It seems like there are several assumptions (wishful thinking) that we can make from these numbers. First, we’ve got another special election that voters are going all in on. The fact that Republican counties are returning their ballots at a higher rate than Democratic counties is pretty normal, and is not nearly as important as the Democratic counties outperforming the 2014 election.
But these numbers are not nearly enough to overcome the huge Republican advantage. Montana has it’s right wing crazies for sure, but the fact that they elect Democrats state wide, is an indicator that it has a very large centrist voter population.
The way we win in 2018 is with high Democratic turnout and a large % of centrists realizing how they’ve been betrayed by Republicans and that they have FAR more in common with Democrats. So how many centrists will turn out to send a “we’ve been betrayed” message will be very telling. You certainly get tired of coming up just short in these deep red areas, but anything under 10 points will still mean we’re energized and still on track for 2018. But I’ll go out on a limb and say that Quist wins a squeaker.
If you’re in the area and can help with GOTV, now is the time to do it!
RESIST!