5 November 2018 — 1542 mst
New poll reports Rosendale plus 3, Gianforte plus 8
A Change Research poll conducted 2–4 November and released today reports Matt Rosendale is leading Sen. Jon Tester by three points, and that Rep. Greg Gianforte has an eight-point lead on Kathleen Williams. Libertarians Rick Breckenridge and Elinor Swanson were at three and two points respectively.
As displayed on the plots below, the Rosendale versus Tester result is an outlier, but the Gianforte versus Williams is not.
How the sample of 879 likely voters was taken and weighted are unknown. The sampling margin of error is 3.3 percent. The paucity of information about the poll’s methodology and crosstabs raises red flags and suggests the survey may have been conducted by a partisan organization and released to gain a partisan advantage.
Although the poll is an outlier for the U.S. Senate election, being an outlier is not the same as being inaccurate.
Even if there’s been a late in the election surge in support Rosendale, it may not matter. Much of the vote is in already:
FiveThirtyEight’s Lite Model still rates Montana’s U.S. Senate election as leaning Democratic, giving Tester odds of winning as five in seven. The Lite Model rates the U.S. House election as likely Republican, giving Gianforte odds of winning as three in four.
Below, the latest plots for both races. I’ve omitted an average and defer to FiveThirtyEight for that calculation.
