Montana Senate race 2014 poll: Steve Daines in driver’s seat

Politico ^ | 11/19/13 | Emily Schultheis

[Viennacon]

Republicans see Montana’s open Senate seat as a key piece of their puzzle to win the chamber next year — and a new poll suggests that Rep. Steve Daines, the top GOP candidate in the race, is in good shape to pick up the seat.

He leads both Democratic candidates, current Lt. Gov. John Walsh and former Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger, by double digits in the survey from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling. Against Walsh, national Democrats’ preferred candidate, Daines leads by 17 points, 52 percent to 35 percent. Bohlinger does slightly better than Walsh, but he’s still far behind Daines: the Republican takes 51 percent to Bohlinger’s 36 percent, a 15-point gap.

Daines is the most well-known candidate of the group, though his approval ratings are underwater — 37 percent approve and 42 percent disapprove. Just a fifth of those surveyed didn’t have an opinion of him.

The poll surveyed 952 Montana voters from Nov. 15-17, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percentage points.

[Viennacon]

Daines is doing far better than I had predicted. He has cleared the primary field, and now leads the rat's prefered candidate by 17 points. He has to get his approvals up, but other than that, he's in good shape as long as he takes nothing for granted (see Rick Berg in North Dakota). It would appear Montanans are reluctant to give the seat to another Dem after Baucus' helmship of the Obamacare disaster. Daines can take it if he doesn't sleep on the job, which is good news.

One less race to worry about. I'd say at this point, four races are locking up. This one, West Virginia, South Dakota, and Arkansas.

None of the candidates in these four are perfect. All have considerable establishment ties, but outside of that, we have two great Tea Party candidates in Louisiana and North Carolina, and that's not mentioning the various primary challenges to entrenched senate RINOS like Thad Cochran.

[rhinohunter]

I just hope our candidates have the discipline not to field any questions about rape.
Because you know that starting from about Labor Day up until Election Day the msm vermin will be peppering them with (totally irrelevant) questions about rape.

[Viennacon]

The only place I can see that maybe happening is Georgia.

[Theodore R.]

We’ll see, but the history of MT senators is one of “Democrat”.

[muleskinner]

That was my first thought. Is this guy smart enough to understand a trap question and keep his yap shut or is he another Akin?