If you’re familiar with names like Max Baucus, Jon Tester and Steve Bullock, you know that Montana isn’t the unfriendliest state for Democrats. But it hasn’t been too welcoming to Democratic presidential candidates. Since 2000, the Republican candidate has only failed to crack 55 percent once (in 2008) and the Democrat has been held under 40 percent three times. In 2000, Al Gore only won a third of the state’s votes. Bill Clinton did win Montana in 1992, but that was almost certainly an anomaly related to H. Ross Perot splitting the libertarian-minded vote.
A new survey from Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows Trump leading Biden there 51 percent to 42 percent. That sounds bad, but consider that Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Montana by 20.4 percentage points. The same poll shows Senate candidate Steve Bullock leading incumbent Steve Daines 46 percent to 44 percent. I wouldn’t call Montana a swing state in 2020, but there is still time for Trump’s support there to crumble. He’s already doing poorly enough that he might not be able to carry Daines across the finish line.
Trump crushed Hillary in Missouri by 18.7 percent in 2016, continuing a trend away from the Democrats in the Show-Me State. Bill Clinton carried Missouri twice and in 2008, Barack Obama lost there by one-tenth of one percent. Four years later, however, Obama lost by 9.4 percent, and it’s no longer considered a swing-state. A survey from St. Louis University/YouGov basically confirms this, with Trump leading 50 to 43.
The swing in the two states is similar at about eleven points split roughly between higher support for Biden and lower support for Trump. In both cases, it would take a further drop and rise of four to five points to put the states in toss-up territory. These will hard points to find because the national Democratic Party doesn’t speak too well to swing voters in Montana and Missouri, but neither state is as set in its ways as the Deep South.
If Trump continues to trend down (and why wouldn’t he?) then you could see these states come into play. They won’t be getting much if any investment from the Biden campaign because they will have no bearing on who wins the election. Of the two, Biden is more interested in Montana despite its smaller haul of Electoral College votes because there is both a competitive Senate race and a competitive at-large Congressional seat in play. If not for the COVID-19 risk, it might rate a Biden visit on the campaign trail.
Expanding the map is the right call. Make the Republicans spend on seats they took for granted.
Biden will need every single vote possible in Congress if they want to get anything done. And, flipping “safe” R seats will make the Republicans have a reckoning sooner, jettisoning the white nationalism in search of a better electoral formula.
Like Chris Christie?