Matt Singer’s Home (for 36 Hours, At Least)

November 6, 2006 in Conrad Burns, Jon Tester, Montana, Politics

by Matt Singer

Alright, folks. Hopefully, you’re used to reading me over at Left in the West. Well, I screwed up and went with a lousy domain registrar and now I can’t renew my domain. I’ll get a new-and-improved shop set up after the election, but with all the work to be done, that’s a low priority.

So what’s happening?

• Both the Republicans and the Democrats have unprecedented Get Out the Vote operations up-and-running in Montana. I’ve seen some folks trying to compare these two operations. Let me tell you, unless you’ve got a background in field organizing and have really had a chance to get inside info from the two side’s field operations, you’re probably not in a great position to judge which side is doing the better job. By all indications, though, both sides are running extremely strong.
• Gallup is polling Tester way up: 50-41. My gut? I don’t believe it. We may be up. We ain’t up 9. I think we’re up 1 or 2. That’s more in line with other polling. A 1 or 2 point race is also one that will be determined by turnout.
• Early voting is way, way up. This one is across the board. Yellowstone is looking at 20,000 early voters. Missoula County is looking at 15,000. Cascade has had 11,000 or so. County offices are also seeing walk-in voters (people who were unregistered). How many of these are there? As far as I know, no one has firm numbers on that. Who do they help? Good question. My gut says new voters help challengers, as few people get excited by incumbents, but we’ll see. Both sides are spinning hard on early voters. We’ll see which team actually delivered.

Alright, that’s it for now. My guess is that we’re probably out of new polls except for the one that matters. In spite of the recent surge for Burns, the consensus view is still that we’re in the driver’s seat in Montana. TradeSports has us up. Most folks are still predicting a Tester victory.