30 October 2018 — 1520 mdt
New Gravis poll has Williams and Gianforte tied 48–48
Note. Yesterday’s post rewritten, with new plots.
A Gravis poll released today, and conducted 24–26 October, reports Democrat Kathleen Williams is tied with Rep. Greg Gianforte at 48 percent each, with three percent undecided. The 782 likely voters sample has a 3.5 percent margin of error. Gravis made live calls to landlines, and used an online panel for cell phone. “The results are weighted by voting demographics.”
Both a straight average of the September and October polls, and of FiveThirtyEight’s adjusted values for these polls, put Williams approximately three points behind Gianforte.
FiveThirtyEight’s Lite forecast (polls only) now gives Williams three chances in eight of winning, putting the race somewhere between a toss-up and leans Republican.
As displayed by the plots below, the (out of the University of Montana) Big Sky Poll, which put Williams up by a point, was not in accord with the previous polls for this election. According to the BSP’s documentation, the sample of likely voters is weighted only by geography and gender. Over half of the persons sampled had at least a bachelor’s degree, a significant difference from the 35–38 percent of voting eligible Montanans with at least a bachelor’s degree. That probably skews the result toward Williams and away from Gianforte.
First, Flathead Memo’s standard plot of the polls for September and October:
Next, a plot displaying Williams’ net lead as (a) reported by the pollster, and (b) adjusted by FiveThirtyEight (FiveThirtyEight’s adjustments are found on the forecast page):
Williams and her campaign will find the Gravis poll's results encouraging. It’s possible she’s riding the crest of a rising blue wave. It’s also possible Gianforte is actually leading, but he should be concerned that the undecideds will break for the challenger.
Williams is running hard, but time is running out. Today, she’s in Columbia Falls and Whitefish, where the Flathead’s densest clusters of Democrats are found, to generate some publicity and buck up the spirits of Democratic activists.
At The Montana Post, Mary Moe, who used to teach in Columbia Falls, has an interesting profile of Williams.