New poll has bad news for Democrats in key Senate race

Vulnerable Democratic Sen. Jon Tester trails his GOP opponent by 8 points in a new independent poll of Montana’s Senate race — a result that could very well tip control of the Senate to Republicans.

Republican Tim Sheehy took 49 percent of the vote, compared to Tester’s 41 percent, on a four-way ballot, according to the late-August survey of 600 likely voters in the state commissioned by AARP. The Libertarian candidate received 4 percent of the vote, while the Green Party candidate took 1 percent. (In a head-to-head contest, Sheehy leads Tester by 6 points, 51 to 45 percent.)

Propelling Sheehy’s lead is the popularity of former President Donald Trump, who leads Vice President Kamala Harris in the state, 56 to 41 percent. Trump leads among independent voters by 9 points. Tester holds a narrow lead with independent voters in the Senate match up.

“Trump is running ahead of Sheehy with almost every age and partisan group, but Tester is not overperforming Harris by enough to overcome the large gap at the top of the ticket,” the bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward and David Binder Research concluded in their memo. They also warned that: “Tester and Harris have both nearly maxed out their vote share among Democrats.”

Tester is among the few congressional Democrats who have declined to endorse Harris’ bid for president.

Unlike some of the states with both competitive presidential and Senate races, there have been relatively few public polls in Montana over the past few months — though Sheehy has claimed a lead in several of them, a trend that brings relief to Republicans looking to take back the Senate. Democrats have enjoyed a polling edge in most other competitive races in the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt. But the GOP needs to flip only two seats to reclaim control of the Senate, and they already have a near-certain pickup in West Virginia, where Democratic-turned-independent Sen. Joe Manchin is retiring.

Montana, the home state of National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines , is the GOP’s top priority. Daines personally recruited Sheehy, a military veteran and businessperson.

The survey was conducted Aug. 25-29 on behalf of AARP. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.