Tester's wins have always been squeakers here in MT, but polling trends are concerning. Two issues seem to be at play:
1) influx of people moving to MT seeking "redder" pastures in last several years, and 2) barrage of negative ads across media (people tuning out). Tester needs to up his game here. Rallies, more meet & greets, debate with Sheehy, campaign event with Tim Walz. Trying to 'do something' via LTEs & phone-banking.
The fact that they got such divergent results doesn't prove they're not credible. Let's say the real sentiment in August was even and it's now Sheehy +4. They got samples that were somewhat off from that and didn't massage them.
The latest edition of Sarah Longwell’s podcast The Focus Group highlights the OH, MT, and TX Senate races. The focus groups are made up of Trump voters who are undecided on each state’s Senate race. Very interesting (but also scary) listening.
Julie Stauch is leading the Omaha coordinated campaign. She has worked on many campaigns, managing a couple of Leonard Boswell’s successful reelection campaigns in IA-03 and also Mazie Hirono’s Democratic Senate primary. Most recently ran Mike Franken’s 2022 IA-Sen bid.
16 years is not such a long time! We should not be defeatist about this. And the Harris-Walz campaign, which is swimming in cash, should make a play in both Florida and Texas, IMO. Show up, run some powerful ads and don't give voters there the impression that the national ticket is writing them off.
The Montana Senate race has been bugging me. 538 shows two polls from RMG Research:
August 15: Tester +5
September 24: Sheehy +7
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2024/montana/
That’s a 12-point swing in just over a month, from the same pollster! This doesn’t seem credible to me. Any thoughts?
I think both polls are wrong and that the race is very close.
Agree. Something stinks about the polling coming out of MT.
Something is rotten in the state of Montana.
Tester's wins have always been squeakers here in MT, but polling trends are concerning. Two issues seem to be at play:
1) influx of people moving to MT seeking "redder" pastures in last several years, and 2) barrage of negative ads across media (people tuning out). Tester needs to up his game here. Rallies, more meet & greets, debate with Sheehy, campaign event with Tim Walz. Trying to 'do something' via LTEs & phone-banking.
The fact that they got such divergent results doesn't prove they're not credible. Let's say the real sentiment in August was even and it's now Sheehy +4. They got samples that were somewhat off from that and didn't massage them.
I see my post was unclear. I was suggesting that a 12-point swing wasn’t credible – not that the pollster lacks credibility.
Yeah, that's probably too big a swing to have actually happened.
The latest edition of Sarah Longwell’s podcast The Focus Group highlights the OH, MT, and TX Senate races. The focus groups are made up of Trump voters who are undecided on each state’s Senate race. Very interesting (but also scary) listening.
Julie Stauch is leading the Omaha coordinated campaign. She has worked on many campaigns, managing a couple of Leonard Boswell’s successful reelection campaigns in IA-03 and also Mazie Hirono’s Democratic Senate primary. Most recently ran Mike Franken’s 2022 IA-Sen bid.
16 years is not such a long time! We should not be defeatist about this. And the Harris-Walz campaign, which is swimming in cash, should make a play in both Florida and Texas, IMO. Show up, run some powerful ads and don't give voters there the impression that the national ticket is writing them off.
Yes, definitely about FL- and TX-Sen, but 16 years is a very long time in partisan politics.
Tell me about it; Florida has not elected a Democratic governor since 1994
Well, in 2018, DeSantis beat Gillum by only 4/10ths of a percent: 49.59–49.19.
Get some boots on the ground as well. Harris has some in FL.
I hope they’re white knee-high’s like DeSantis’ boots!
"Harris has some [boots on the ground] in FL" must be the understatement of the day!
"Our campaign continues to gain momentum like never before."
– Mark Robinson
Yup, that’s what happens when you are in free fall – you have great momentum. At least briefly.
Favorite newsletter of the day. Thank you. And really interesting about Indiana!
Thank you so much, Jessica! I really appreciate you telling us.