Trump, Clinton lead in Montana Poll
Montanans support Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for their respective parties’ presidential nominations, but Trump would handily defeat Clinton in the general election, according to an independent poll released Monday.
The Montana Poll, which is conducted by Montana State University-Billings, found that among Republicans and independents, Trump leads his nearest rival Ben Carson by 22 to 19 percent. They were followed by Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who are tied with 14 percent.
Nearly 47 percent of Democrats and independents support Clinton, while 30 percent support her closest rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The poll was conducted by 12 MSU-Billings students through a statewide random sample telephone survey Nov. 16-23 with 435 adult Montanans. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.
Polling on a statewide race between Donald Trump and the two leading Democrats was paradoxical, considering Clinton’s strength in the primary.
In a matchup between Trump and Clinton, 51 percent of respondents support Trump, 30 percent support Clinton and 19 percent did not have an opinion.
In the scenario of Sanders versus Trump, 46 sided with Trump while 40 percent support Sanders and 14 percent did not have an opinion.
“The most surprising outcome in the poll for me was the weakness of Hillary Clinton relative to Bernie Sanders among Montanans,” said Joshua Poulette, a professor of political science at MSU Billings and the director of the poll.
“The closest Montana would come to a Democratic win would be between Trump and Sanders, with just a 6 percent difference.” Sanders generally performed better than Clinton against all of the top four Republican candidates.
Among a wide variety of other topics included in the poll, a plurality of Montanans considered terrorism the most important issue facing the nation.
“Twenty-four percent identified terrorism while 11 percent identified the government. Nine percent identified the economy, 8 percent said the federal debt, and 8 percent pointed to immigration as the most important problem facing the United States,” according to a press release accompanying the poll.
See full results of the 2015 Montana Poll here.