27 August 2020 — 0938 mdt
Governor is Montana’s most important election
Early summer polls report Gianforte
has a serious lead over Cooney
Four publicly available polls of Montana’s gubernatorial election, conducted in July and late June, found Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte leading Democrat Lt. Gov. Mike Cooney by 3 to 9 points, with a weighted average lead of 5.4 points. That’s outside the margin of error/credibility interval of all of the polls. If the samples of the polls were combined, the MOE would be ≈ 1.7 percent.
Neither Cooney nor Gianforte has released a poll contradicting these polls. That usually indicates the campaigns’ internal polls agree with the publicly available polls.
Another candidate. When the polls were conducted, there was still a possibility that the Green Party, hijacked by the Montana Republican Party, would be on the ballot. The hijacking was not successful. But Libertarian candidate Lyman Bishop of Kalispell will be on the ballot. There is a theoretical possibility that Bishop could draw votes from Gianforte, but it’s more likely he will receive votes from people who otherwise would leave their ballots blank or cast write-in votes.
In the two polls that measured favorability/approval, Cooney had a slightly positive rating — but a third to half of the respondents checked the “no opinion” box, suggesting that Cooney, his decades of service in elective office notwithstanding, has a name recognition problem. Gianforte’s rating was several points underwater, but only one of ten likely voters had no opinion of him. Polls taken after Labor Day may reveal whether Cooney has closed the apparent name recognition gap.
Gender disparity. The Emerson College poll, which has an A+ rating from FiveThirtyEight, reports that Gianforte is doing much better with men than Cooney is doing with women. If Cooney cannot do better with both women and men, he will lose the election. Biden’s selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate probably did not help Cooney.
Discussion. Cooney has five hills to climb:
- Far from near universal recognition.
- Trump’s continued popularity in Montana.
- A tendency of some voters, believing that 16 years of the same party’s occupying the governor’s residence is enough, to throw the bums out.
- Very weak support from men.
- An identity politics focused Democratic Party that rural Americans may perceive as hostile to their way of life.
No statewide election is more important to Montanans than our gubernatorial election. If Gianforte wins, he’ll probably sign many crackpot bills that Brian Schweitzer and Steve Bullock would have vetoed — and his friendly signing pen could encourage Republican legislators to pass more right wing legislation than ever before. If the other statewide Democrats — Bullock, Williams, Bennett, Graybill, Romano, Morigeau — lose, nothing changes. If Cooney loses, the counterweight to Montana’s Republican dominated legislature will be jettisoned with catastrophic results for Montanans with the fewest resources and most vulnerabilities. Democrats who can donate to only one statewide candidate should donate to Mike Cooney. And they should donate now: voting starts in early October.