Sheehy maintains poll lead over Tester

U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy held a commanding lead with likely Montana voters in a new election poll commissioned by AARP.

The poll, released Sept. 5, reflects the responses of 1,064 likely voters age 18 to 65-plus with an overall sampling error of plus or minus 4%. The error margin is a tighter 3.5% for people age 50 and over, who were oversampled to get a closer look at Montana’s most reliable voting bloc.

Sheehy, a first-time Republican candidate, held an 8-point advantage over incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester — a margin wide enough to suggest a Sheehy victory if the election were held today, even if the poll’s error margin turns out to have understated voter support for Tester, who is Montana’s only statewide elected Democrat.

In a press call Thursday, pollsters characterized Tester not as a candidate who is trailing, but as one who needs to get back in the race. The poll found Sheehy leading Tester by 6 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup, and having an 8-point edge over Tester when Green Party and Libertarian candidates were added to the mix.

Only one in five respondents identified as a Democrat, with 38% of respondents describing themselves as independents. 

“If we look at what’s happening from a partisan standpoint, only one out of five voters in Montana are Democrats, and Jon Tester is doing a great job of consolidating the Democratic vote. He’s winning 95% of it,” said pollster Bob Ward, of Fabrizio Ward. “He has only a 3-point lead among independents, which is … a large voting bloc in Montana. Thirty-eight percent of Montana voters don’t identify as either Republican or Democrat and are in the middle. And Sheehy is winning 89% of the Republican vote — you could consolidate that a little bit more. But for Jon Tester to be competitive in this race, he really needs to win more of the independents, and including some of the Republican vote, to get back in this race.” 

The AARP poll is the most recent of five polls tracked by 538 ABC News that have shown Sheehy leading consistently since early August. Fabrizio Ward, which typically polls for Republican campaigns, collaborated with Democratic polling firm David Binder Research on the AARP poll. 

One detail of note is the lack of distance between Tester and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president. Both Tester and Harris polled at 41%. Election results from the past 24 years suggest that to win, Democratic Montana candidates need to do at least 7 points better than the party’s candidate for president.

Tester has indicated he won’t endorse Harris, and didn’t attend the Democratic National Convention in late August.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump outpolled Sheehy in almost every age group. Sheehy trailed Trump by double digits with two groups of voters, those age 35 to 49 and independents.

Pollsters said a slate of bad press days for Sheehy, including coverage of audio recordings of offensive remarks about Native Americans, news about his business finances, and questions about the truthfulness of Sheehy’s claimed skydiving jump into Glacier National Park, hadn’t been publicized when the polling took place.  

A distinctive aspect of the Montana race is how familiar voters are with newcomer Sheehy, Ward said, with 95% recognizing the Republican. As Montana Free Press reported Sept. 2, political action committees through August spent $29 million on Sheehy messaging, both for and against the candidate. Conversely, in Montana’s race for governor, fewer than half the voters polled could identify Democratic challenger Ryan Busse, though they knew incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte.

Gianforte leads Busse 54% to 38% with polled voters. The governor’s favorability rating was 47%, with 43% of polled voters viewing Gianforte unfavorably.

The poll showed no statewide races in which Democrats were in the lead.

Tom Lutey is a reporter for the Montana Free Press, a nonprofit newsroom, and can be reached at tlutey@montanafreepress.org.