In Pivotal Senate Race, Republican Takes Significant Lead Over Incumbent Democrat

Democrats hoping to maintain control of the United States Senate in 2025 have been jolted by a new poll that shows Montana’s incumbent Democratic senator trailing his Republican challenger by 8 points with under two months to go until Election Day.

The AARP poll found 49% of Montana voters back Republican Tim Sheehy and 41% support incumbent Jon Tester, while the Libertarian candidate takes 4% and the Green Party, 1%. Sheehy appears to be the beneficiary of Donald Trump’s popularity in the state: The former president has a commanding 56% to 41% lead. He won the state by 16 points in 2020 and 21 in 2016. 

The Democrats are defending 23 Senate seats in 2024, compared to just 11 for the Republicans. The GOP needs to flip only two seats to wrest control of the upper chamber back from the Democrats. 

A former Navy SEAL, 37-year-old Sheehy is the founder and CEO of aerial firefighting company Bridger Aerospace. 

Sheehy’s support is strongest among voters over age 49 years, who favored him by 16 points. That block is also the most likely to vote, with a whopping 92% describing themselves as “extremely motivated” to cast a ballot, compared to 77% of voters 18 to 49. The results come despite a Democratic spending advantage in the race, with the leftist party spending $128 million compared to the GOP’s $109 million.  

Republicans strategists are buoyed by the polling, and suggest Sheehy may well outperform them. “Even in the 2020 Senate race, which Steve [Daines] won by double digits, we never saw numbers as strong as we are seeing now from Tim Sheehy,” NRSC Executive Director Jason Thielman tells Axios.

The new Montana poll prompted the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics to move the status of the contest from “toss-up” to “leans Republican,” noting that…

“History and recent trends are just not on Tester’s side, as we have mentioned previously. He is one of a relatively small number of partisan outliers in either chamber of Congress, holding a Senate seat that the other party won by 16 points in the most recent presidential election.

The race is seen as essential for Democratic ambitions to retain their hold on the Senate in 2025. “If Tester does lose…Democrats will have no path to win the Senate majority unless they can somehow put a currently Republican-held seat in play,” writes the Center for Politics’ Kyle Kondik, noting that Democrats are considering a stronger, long-shot push to dislodge Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Florida Sen. Rick Scott, whose races are both rated as “Likely Republican.” 

“The upshot of this [Montana] rating change is that there are now 51 Senate seats rated as Safe, Likely, or Leaning Republican, so this move solidifies the Republicans as clear favorites to flip control of the Senate this November,” writes Kondik.

The switch in Montana’s status leaves Ohio as the only race still considered a toss-up by the Center. That race also has Democrats on the defensive, with incumbent Sherrod Brown facing Trump-backed candidate Bernie Moreno. The RealClearPolitics poll average has Moreno down 3.6%. In March, he handily won a bitter, three-way primary battle that saw him defeat the establishment favorite who’d been endorsed by Gov. Mike DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman, and who outspent Moreno. 

Against their two-flipped-seat goal, the Republicans seemingly have one firmly in their pocket already, as 73-year-old West Virginia Democrat-turned-Republican Governor Jim Justice has a 34-point lead in the race for the seat of retiring Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Manchin.