HELENA – Steve Daines and Ryan Zinke captured seats in the U.S. Senate and House on Tuesday by each winning 50 of the state’s 56 counties.
Daines and Zinke benefited from the tidal wave that hurt Democratic candidates throughout the country.
“I think the trends we saw nationally carried in Montana,” said David Parker, a political science professor at Montana State University.
Unofficial return totals showed Daines collecting 58 percent of the vote to Democrat Amanda Curtis’ 40 percent in the Senate race. In the House, Zinke took 55 percent to Democrat John Lewis’ 40 percent.
Curtis and Lewis didn’t fare as well in some traditionally Democratic urban counties as Democrats usually do.
“The Democratic path to victory, which is winning those big urban counties, was not happening,” Parker said.
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Voter turnout in the Democratic stronghold of Missoula County was the fourth worst in the state at 48 percent, according to unofficial totals from Secretary of State Linda McCulloch’s office.
“Democrats have to run up the score in Missoula,” but didn’t Tuesday, Parker said.
Likewise, Cascade County, another county that usually votes Democratic, had a 51 percent turnout, below the statewide average of 55 percent. Daines and Zinke each carried Cascade County.
In counties that usually favor GOP candidates, Republicans ran stronger than usual, Parker said.
In Flathead County on Tuesday, Zinke pulled in 64 percent of the vote in his home county, while two years ago, Republican Senate candidate Denny Rehberg had 55 percent there.
“You just look across the map,” Parker said. “Republicans did better in Republican areas and they eked into Democratic strongholds.”
Democrats have to win Lewis and Clark County, Parker said, but Curtis and Lewis both lost there. Lewis lost narrowly in his home county.
Likewise, Gallatin is a county that Democrats have to win or make it close, but did not do so Tuesday. Daines is from Bozeman.
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Daines won in 50 counties, grabbing 67 percent of the vote in Flathead County, 65 percent in Ravalli, 61 percent in the state’s most populous county of Yellowstone, 56 percent in Cascade, 53 percent in his home county of Gallatin and 52 percent in Lewis and Clark, according to unofficial returns.
Curtis won six counties: Big Horn, Blaine, Deer Lodge, Glacier, Missoula and Silver Bow. Her biggest margin was in her home county of Silver Bow, where she won 66 percent of the vote.
In the House race, Zinke won in 50 counties, grabbing 58 percent of the vote in Yellowstone, 54 percent in Cascade and 49 percent in wins in Lewis and Clark and Gallatin, in addition to his 64 percent in Flathead.
Lewis won the same six counties as Curtis did, polling best in Missoula, Deer Lodge, Silver Bow and Big Horn, each with 56 percent.
Daines and Zinke each had huge campaign finance advantages over their opponents.
Curtis didn’t enter the Senate race officially until mid-August when she was appointed to replace Sen. John Walsh on the ballot.
“Amanda Curtis did a great job under the circumstances,” Parker said.
However, he said there was no chance Curtis was going to defeat Daines, the state’s congressman, unless “something strange happened.”
The fact that Lewis received the same 40 percent statewide vote total as Curtis, despite launching his campaign 10 months earlier, shows that Lewis “really underperformed,” Parker said.
Republicans now will control two-thirds of Montana’s congressional delegation and the two houses of the Legislature.
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Where do Montana Democrats go from here?
“The good news for Democrats is 2016 is a presidential election year,” Parker said. “That tends to increase turnout.”
Democrats need a really good candidate recruitment effort in 2016, he said, praising the party’s legislative recruitment this cycle.
However, Democrats are learning it’s harder to raise campaign funds without well-connected Sen. Max Baucus, who resigned in February to become U.S. ambassador to China.
The good news for Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, who’s up for re-election in 2016, is that the makeup of the 2015 Legislature isn’t much different from that in 2013, Parker said.
“The bad news, is if I were a ‘responsible Republican,’ what would I stand to gain by working with Bullock this time?” he said.
Some “responsible Republicans” who united with Bullock and Democratic legislators in 2013 to pass some key bills, only to find themselves targeted by Democratic mailers this fall.
Parker also questioned why Republicans would want to hand Bullock any legislative victories in 2015, the year before the governor’s up for re-election.
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Missoulian State Bureau reporter Mike Dennison contributed to the story.
