11 March 2023 — 1616 mst
Jon Tester’s odds of winning re-election in 2024
are better than many Montana pundits suppose
By James Conner
After the 2020 and 2022 Republican sweeps in Montana, when Democrats lost all statewide and Congressional district elections, and the GOP gained a supermajority in the legislature, some of the state’s most astute political commentators are not bullish on Democrat Jon Tester’s chances of winning a fourth term in the U.S. Senate.
At the Flathead Beacon, Editor in Chief Kellyn Brown, expressing mild surprise that Tester’s running for a fourth term, observed that “His next race will be his toughest yet. And that’s saying something since none have been easy.”
Tester won by pluralities in 2006 and 2012, and by a slim majority in 2018.
After reviewing Tester’s winning campaigns in 2006, 2012, and 2018, Brown explained what troubles him about Tester’s prospects in 2024:
It’s fair to say 2020 was a bloodbath for Tester’s party as Republicans swept every office, from the governor to the secretary of state to the attorney general. And none of the races were particularly close. Perhaps most worrisome for the Democratic Party was the showing by Steve Bullock, the relatively popular outgoing governor who was heavily recruited and eventually agreed to challenge Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Steve Daines. Bullock lost by 10 percentage points.
Whether it was due to COVID lockdowns, an influx of newcomers, or both, Montana, which notoriously split tickets for decades, was now voting strictly along party lines and leaning heavily Republican. Two years later, in 2022, the GOP would capture supermajorities in the state House and Senate, the results of which are playing out in real time as culture wars are being fought and constitutional changes proposed at the Legislature.
Brown might have added that Donald Trump won Montana in 2020 by a larger percentage (half a point) and a greater number of votes than in 2016, even improving his totals in counties that had lost population after 2016.
Download history of Montana turnout 2006–2022 spreadsheet.
Trump lost both the 2020 national popular and electoral votes by wide margins, but in Montana he was more popular than ever, and may have carried Gianforte, Daines, and Rosendale to victory on his coattails. If he’s the the Republican nominee in 2024, and he well could be, he’ll again turn out the GOP vote in Montana.
Tester’s appeal? He’s not an urban Democrat.
Still, as Burns, Rehberg, and Rosendale learned, it’s always a mistake to underestimate the political skills and genuine popularity of Big Sandy’s burly crewcut farmer whose ability to repair an engine and mastery of the barnyard vernacular prevent his being tarred as an identity politics urbanite Democrat who disdains those who make their livings with their hands.
Tester has the good earth under his fingernails. He turns a wrench with Smokey Yunick's expertise. Despite his 18 years in Washington, D.C., he's still the down to earth Montana farmer, still the good neighbor, still one of us. That's how Democrats win statewide in culturally conservative, sparsely populated states where politics are reddened by a frontier sense of self reliance.
Brown mentioned Bullock’s huge 2020 loss to Daines, but that election probably does not have much predictive value for Montana’s 2024 U.S. Senate election. Although an incumbent governor, Bullock was challenging an incumbent Senator who had all the advantages of incumbency and who used them effectively. Bullock lacked working class creds — he was not a farmer like Tester, or a child of ranchers like Max Baucus, who earned working class creds through his Work Days — and was burdened by his mask mandates and other pandemic policies that were effective but also poisonously unpopular with libertarian leaning swing voters.
Republican polls show Rosendale and Zinke losing to Tester
Fivethirtyeight reports two early 2023 polls matching Tester against U.S. Reps. Matt Rosendale and Ryan Zinke, and Gov. Greg Gianforte.
OnMessage, according to the Ballotpedia, is a polling firm catering to Republicans and known for its association with former GOP governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindel.
The Political Company is run by Jake Eaton, a Montana Republican operative with a long history of aggressive conduct. Eaton’s two-page analysis of his poll is available online at Google.
Neither poll included a Libertarian in the choices presented to those being polled. Neither offered Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen as an alternative to Tester. This suggests to me that the polls were commissioned, by candidates or consultants hoping to recruit a candidate, to get a sense of how well they matched up against Tester.
And how did they match up with Tester? Not that well. Gianforte did best by tying Tester, but Gianforte’s an executive personality who would be miserable in the U.S. Senate. OnMessage has Rosendale leading by five points, but The Political Company has his losing by five, and Zinke losing by six. Those numbers suggest that what happened to Bullock two years ago may not happen to Tester next year.
Last month, before Tester announced he’s running in 2024, I opined that Rosendale, who has a safe seat in the U.S. House for the next decade or two, would be reckless to risk losing that by running another campaign against Tester. Zinke’s western district seat is less safe, but he probably can hold it as long as he wants as long as he stays out of trouble with dubious get rich quick schemes. I think Zinke (who sometimes will do the right things out of expediency) would be the stronger general election candidate than Rosendale (who always will do the wrong thing out of conviction), but Rosendale might have the advantage in a primary, especially a primary with several candidates.
Tester’s not a shoo-in for 2024. But he’s not doomed to defeat, the elections of 2020 and 2022 notwithstanding. It’s going to take more than a neo-Bircher like Rosendale to plow him under.