Montanans Voting for Change; Voting for Tester (aparently leading by 21% in early voting)

[Ediacara]

Montanans Voting for Change; Voting for Tester

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

Poll Shows Burns Trailing Badly Among Early Voters

As President Bush lands in Montana to plead for support for Sen. Conrad Burns, a new poll released Thursday shows challenger Jon Tester with a commanding 21% lead among early voters.

The poll, conducted by Lake Snell Perry Mermin this week, shows Tester leading Burns 58% to 37% among Montanans who have already voted. According to the Montana Secretary of State’s office, 56,453 Montanans have cast early ballots as of this morning.

Sen. Burns has trailed in every poll so far in his re-election campaign. In the past Sen. Burns has never trailed in the polls with only five days left until Election Day.

“Montanans are so eager for change that they are early-voting in unprecedented numbers. And we are seeing a stunning number of them preferring Jon Tester,” said Tester spokesman Matt McKenna. “We are a long way from the finish line, and nobody on our side is popping the corks, but we are happy with our Montana-fueled field effort so far.”

Press release about 1/3 down the page

I have no idea how LSPM is conducting this poll; exit interviews, robodialing, or what, but it looks like good news :-) To be fair though, Tester's homepage does encourage people to early vote, but I have a hunch this trend will continue come 07 November.

[Ediacara]

1. kick

What? No responses to good news?

[texpatriot2004]

2. Where did you find the early voting results? nm

[Ediacara]

3. The link is right there....

It's a poll conducted by LSPM, but I don't know how it was conducted, like I said.

[texpatriot2004]

5. oops sorry nm

[Ediacara]

6. No problem

[Change has come]

4. fantastic news

K&R

[Rainscents]

7. I bet, polls are being conduct it out side of polling place as people

are leaving... This is my guess.

[William Bloode]

8. Good news to go too dreamland on.

Ahh, things are sure looking much nicer and bluer these days.

[Grebrook]

9. How much of the total vote is this? 50,000 out of how many expected voters? 150,000?

[Rainscents]

11. Yes, it's little more then 1/3.

[Hippo_Tron]

10. Somebody needs to get the demographic figures on this

In Arizona the DSCC is giving money to Pederson because he's leading in early voting and the majority of early voters are Republicans.

[sandnsea]

12. My husband got mail

Some polling company wanting to know how he voted after we turned our ballots in. Maybe that's how they do it everywhere. :shrug:

[Ediacara]

15. That makes sense

Although I'm curious how they'd get ahold of info on who has early voted. Is that publicly available?

[sandnsea]

16. Yeah

The parties get the results every day. I'm pretty sure they have to pay a processing fee. I don't know exactly how the money part works, but all the interest groups get the info too because they stop calling us as soon as our ballots are returned. Somewhere in there, polling companies must get the info too. We have mail-in, we got our ballots last week. I guess absentee and other early voting works the same.

[Grebrook]

13. HEY! I just remembered something, isn't early voting most popular with RURAL voters?

And thus isn't this where Burns is supposedly his strongest? If he can't win among rural voters, wouldn't he logically get decimated in the suburbs and sparse urban districts in Montana?

[Ediacara]

14. Possibly

Early voting in Montana is a little weird. You go to your county courthouse, fill out an absentee request, and then they give you an absentee ballot that you can fill out at a number of voting booths set up in the office. It may end up being more urban-heavy since rural voters could theoretically drive farther to get to the county courthouse rather than their regular polling place. When I early voted it was actually extremely busy and I had to wait a long time to vote. Longer in fact than I've ever waited to vote.

On the other hand, rural voters may end up voting when they go into town just to get it over and done with since who knows what the weather will be like next Tuesday (it's already snowed and few times and we've had sub-zero lows the last few nights).

[cnlst8]

17. YAY. Keep them coming.

Remember if the Democrats are leading or won 5 "turnover" states, MT will be the last state that Dems will need to win the Senate.