I noted in my In These Times piece that a big cause of Tester Schweitzer's (Oops. --ed.) victory was his narrowing of the margin in key rural counties. The lesson of fighting even in rough counties (much akin to Dean's 50 state strategy) struck me as the number one takeaway from his victory two years ago: Fight everywhere. Schweitzer didn’t write off the rural areas of Montana that have recently become Republican strongholds. He campaigned statewide, winning two counties typically lost by Democrats and narrowing the margin in dozens of others.
I don't have the numbers any more, but Schweitzer posted something like 1/3 of his gain between '00 and '04 in rural counties that he lost. It was something I took seriously when approaching the '06 Senate race.
Back in June of '05, I wrote that electability wasn't the main factor, but even if we were looking at it, Tester was more electable largely because of his ties to rural Montana. In the comments, someone said that Tester could never top Burns on ag or in rural Montana, here's my response: Right. It won’t make a difference at all. Tester hasn’t been winning in a rural district after all. Now, you can say it won’t make a significant difference, but turning a handful of those rural counties 5-10% more in our favor is a big piece in the electoral puzzle. In other words, the goal wouldn't be to win these counties, but to close the margin.
But none of this really answers the question. Who won it for Tester? Missoula or rural Montana?
Now, I haven't had a chance to do the county-by-county comparison of Tester '06 with Schweitzer '04 (and my initial comparison was Tester '06 with Schweitzer '04), but the counties where Courtney talks up a big Tester performance are largely ones that make up his old Senate district, a place where voters had backed him in the past. If he hadn't outperformed in these counties, it would have been very surprising.
The other thing that is clear in looking at results (and this isn't surprising, really, given the results) is that Tester outperformed Schweitzer's numbers from 2000 and Schweitzer in 2004 outperformed Tester's numbers from this year.
Still, Burns is a formidable opponent in rural Montana. Even narrowing the gap a bit, which Tester apparently did, is a major victory and indicates Tester's strength in rural Montana.
As Courtney notes, Tester's weakest performance probably came in Cascade County, where repeated attacks on Tester implying he would close Malmstrom apparently had an effect.
Still, if history is any gauge, now that Tester is in, with the profile he has, he'll soon be sitting on some very comfortable approve/disapprove numbers.
So to really get down to it -- who won it for Jon? Rural Montana or Missoula?
That's easy. They both did. Without the gains he made in both places, he would have lost this race. |
