Montana polling

Not surprisingly, early polling shows Montana to be a red state on the Presidential level. The reason for this is that (how does one put this delicately?) Republicans win when Republicans put up a strong candidate for state-wide office.

This has seemed to be a problem for the Montana GOP in recent years.

Anyway, the extremes of the results aren't surprising.

The only candidates scoring less than 50% on the "would you consider voting for candidate X" scale were Republicans Mitt Romney (can Montana Headlines say "told you so?") and Newt Gingrich (as we have pointed out, the politics of yesterday) -- along with Democrats Al Gore (ditto) and Hillary Clinton (surely no comment needed there.)

McCain, Guiliani, and Thompson top the field in Montana. And gratifyingly, in a state with a significant GOP voter registration edge, the two Democrats tied for the top billing are an African American (Obama) and a Hispanic American (Richardson.)

Yep, those dang Montana racists again.

Only Hillary Clinton was truly in a league of her own (fully 61% of Montanans polled said they would not vote for her.) Even Mitt Romney could beat her in Montana this year.

This again confirms that Sen. Clinton's red state negatives are such that her strategy will need to be one of running the table of the usual blue states plus winning Ohio. Chancy.

What is interesting is the fact that both parties have candidates who can put new states into play -- Richardson, Obama, Guiliani, McCain, and Thompson are all fresh enough to make that happen. Although it doesn't appear likely that Montana will be in play, unless it is a nation-wide blowout. (And there are a couple of Republicans who could engineer just such a blowout.)