ARG: Montana Still Competitive

Montana is definitely "in play" (0.00 / 0)

I don't think ARG is as good as other pollsters, but I don't think any polls are very meaningful 2 months out.  The rasmussen poll picked up the maximum RNC "bounce" with mostly positive responses to Palin at that point--that's already changing.  There are many good reasons why Montana won't go overwhelmingly Republican this year (and I'll try my best to avoid the generic but true argument that Obama is simply so much better than McCain that he should be winning 80-20 across the entire country :-):

• Democrats have nominated a very strong candidate, arguably the most qualified and best-prepared in many decades, and one without some of the "baggage" (e.g. "East Coast liberal") that is an especial turn-off in the West;
• McCain is a surprisingly weak candidate, and he seems increasingly befuddled and prone to gaffes;
• McCain was the default, not the preferred, candidate for most Republicans, so some [small but possibly significant] proportion of Republicans won't bother to vote for him;
• Palin looks worse and worse every day, and although I expect her to get a sizable "sympathy vote" from mainstream Montana conservatives, that response may be tempered by a recollection of our last "sympathy candidate", folksy but not-too-bright Judy Martz, who didn't do an especially good job by anyone's measure, so again some of the likely R voters may not turn out or may vote 3rd party;
• conversely, the more Montanans learn about Biden the more we'll like him--his track record is well-established, he's not corrupt and his scandals are known and minor, and his voting record is very compatible with moderate Montanans' likes and dislikes;
• unlike most other "red states" we can register all the way up to election day, making campaign efforts and GOTV more effective; I'm pretty sure that later registrants tend to vote more Democratic although I don't have any reference for that assumption;
• we have a better educational system (at least as measured by student performance, not salaries, etc.) and objectively less racism (admittedly partly because of our lack of diversity) than many other "red states".

If the election were held tomorrow I think McCain would win MT by single digits.  Single digits = many 1,000s of votes, but not many 10,000s of votes.  At least hundreds, and hopefully thousands, of Montanans will be or are already volunteering for Obama, getting new voters out, talking to people one-on-one, etc.  Switching a few thousand voters is definitely feasible, and I think this year there's a much higher proportion of "soft supporters" of the status quo (Bush-McCain) than there were in 2004, when "we were at war" and that still seemed to mean something.

At the risk of engaging in circular reasoning, Obama has an advantage in Montana because for our state this is the most exciting presidential election in most voters' lives: like every election since 1992 it could go either way nationally, but unlike every election since 1992 our state could make a difference to the outcome.  That creates a positive feedback: if the polls near to Election Day show something close to a tie, then a higher proportion of "unlikely voters" will get on board, and I think because of enthusiasm levels a higher proportion of those will vote Obama.

The odds still have to favor McCain right now but it's sure close enough to keep us interested.

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by: Duncan Idaho @ Wed Sep 17, 2008 at 03:44:32 AM UTC