Republican Tim Sheehy holds a two-point advantage over Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) in Montana’s U.S. Senate race, according to an Emerson College/the Hill poll.
The survey, published Thursday, finds Sheehy with 48 percent of support, two points ahead of Tester, who has 46 percent. Another five percent of supporters are undecided.
Sheehy has seen steady momentum in his matchup with Tester. An October Emerson College poll had Sheehy four points behind Tester, at 35 percent and 39 percent, respectively. But Sheehy consolidated support at a faster clip than his opponent, closing the gap to just a two–point deficit in March, with Tester at 44 percent and the Republican at 42 percent.
“The share of undecided voters has decreased from 14% to 5% as November draws closer, and Sheehy has benefited with a six-point increase in support, while Tester’s support has only increased by two points,” Emerson College polling executive director Spencer Kimball said in a release.
Tester is one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection this cycle, considering Montana is a red state. In 2018, Tester ran against Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) and won by a narrow 3.5 percentage points. Since then, Republicans have dominated gubernatorial, Senate, and other statewide contests, as Breitbart News has noted:
In 2020, Gov. Greg Gianforte (R-MT) had nearly a thirteen-point victory over Democrat Michael Cooley, [Sen. Steve] Daines [(R-MT)] won his senate race by ten percent, and Rosendale carried the state’s lone congressional district at the time by double digits as well. Republicans also swept the races for attorney general, auditor, and secretary of state. Trump carried the state by 16.4 points over Biden that year.
Democrats currently hold a one-seat majority in the Senate, meaning Republicans need to pick up a net two seats, or at least one seat and the presidency, to take a majority in the next Senate.
The poll also gauged the presidential race in Montana now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democrat nominee after a reportedly behind-the-scenes pressure campaign from top Democrats, Hollywood elites, and donors forced Biden to step aside as the presumptive nominee.
Trump leads Harris 55 percent to 40 percent in a hypothetical head-to-head race, with another five percent undecided. When those undecideds are pushed to pick a candidate and are factored into the full sample, Trump leads 58 percent to 43 percent.
He also leads Harris in a deeper field by 15 points. Trump lands at 54 percent, 39 percent back Harris, and independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. garners five percent. Independent Cornel West, the Green Party’s Jill Stein, and Libertarian Chase Oliver combine for just three-tenths of one percentage point.
The poll sampled 1,000 likely voters from August 5-6. The margin of error is ± three percentage points.
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M. Perdie, J. Knudsen / Breitbart News