Poll: Democrat faces tough deficit in pivotal Montana Senate race
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Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana. Photo: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Montana Republican Tim Sheehy leads Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in one of the most critical races of the 2024 election, according to new AARP polling.
Why it matters: Whichever party wins Montana is likely to control the Senate in 2025, as most signs suggest at this point.
- With West Virginia all but certain to flip Republican, Democrats have to win the eight other competitive seats to keep the Senate at a 50-50 margin — and hope to have a VP Tim Walz as tie-breaker.
- Polling is tight in several other battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Ohio, but Montana appears to be the most perilous for Democrats.
Driving the news: New polling by AARP shows Sheehy up 49% to Tester's 41% when the full ballot with third-party candidates is included — and 51% to 45% in a head-to-head race.
- It's a bright spot for the GOP, which has been hit hard by Vice President Kamala Harris moving to the top of the Democratic ticket.
Republican strategists tell Axios they are bullish about their chances of flipping the Montana seat.
- "Even in the 2020 Senate race, which Steve [Daines] won by double digits, we never saw numbers as strong as we are seeing now from Tim Sheehy," NRSC executive director Jason Thielman told Axios.
Zoom in: Protecting the Tester seat is the Democratic Party's top priority in the Senate.
- Democrats have poured $128 million into Montana Senate race advertising and ad reservations so far this cycle, compared to $109 million from Republicans, according to AdImpact data.
- Democrats for years have had a substantial fundraising advantage over Republicans.
Between the lines: Tester is a unique candidate — a Democrat who has managed to win in an otherwise deeply-red state for three elections in a row.
- The race is right around the margin of error — the kind of tight race Tester has won before.
- But this is the first time he has had to campaign with former President Trump on the ballot.
- Trump won Montana by 16 percentage points in 2020 and 21 points in 2016.
Methodology: The AARP poll surveyed 1,064 likely voters in Montana, with a statewide representative sample of 600 likely voters and an oversample of 464 voters over the age of 50. The margin of error for the representative sample is ± 4 percentage points.
