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President Donald Trump is expected to be in Kalispell sometime next week, hoping to shore up Republican Aaron Flint’s chances of continuing the GOP’s Western U.S. House District winning streak.
An exact time and even the day are still in flux, according to campaign sources. The initial expectation was that Trump would be in Kalispell on Tuesday, Oct. 13, but that has become less certain. Flint and Democrat Sam Forstag are slated to debate in Missoula on Tuesday morning. The race is a statistical tie, according to polling conducted in the past month for Montana Free Press and other public sources.
Trump’s Flathead County vote share in 2024 was more than double that of former Vice President Kamala Harris, meaning Trump, whenever he arrives, will be singing to the choir.
And that Flathead County choir, it turns out, has its fair share of mumblers. Election results over the course of several cycles show that while Flathead County has the second-largest population of Republican voters in the state — only Yellowstone County has more — midterm turnout in Flathead County for a U.S. House is only 72% of turnout in a presidential election year.
“The Republican lean can mask that there’s variation,” said Jeremy Johnson, political science department head at Carroll College in Helena. “Often people focus on the true swing places, but you can lean one side or the other and still have a lot of variation that really matters.”
Consider outgoing incumbent Western District Congressman Ryan Zinke’s performance in Flathead County: He received 40,681 votes in the 2024 presidential election year, compared with 29,290 votes in the 2022 midterm.
“It’s always been a challenge in midterm elections. No one is thinking about the race,” said Al Olszewski, a former Flathead County Republican chair who has been on the ballot for both state and federal offices. “It’s bow hunting season. It’s still boating season. The fishing is excellent in the fall. There are high school sports. Everyone is still outside trying to get that last bit of summer.”
Credit: Lauren Miller, Montana Free Press, CatchLight Local/Report for America
Advertising this election cycle also hasn’t been very intense, Olszewski said, an assessment that squares with campaign finance records showing that super PAC ad buys for all three of Montana’s 2026 congressional races total roughly $24 million. Spending in Montana’s 2024 U.S. Senate race alone exceeded $200 million by October.
None of the other 15 counties in the Western House District experiences the same net midterm voting decline as Flathead County. Gallatin County, which has the most voters and the district’s second-highest population of Republican voters, experiences a similar percentage drop, as does Missoula County, which, despite its liberal reputation, ranks third in Republican votes in the district.
But Republican support takes a 9,000-vote step down from Flathead County to Gallatin. The district’s more sparsely populated counties are less streaky about turnout, but they don’t pack Flathead’s punch in sheer numbers.
The district in its current incarnation has appeared on the ballot only twice before. It was created after the 2020 census showed Montana’s population surpassing 1 million for the first time, with most of the growth occurring in the Western District. It was the first time since 1990 that Montana’s population warranted two House districts.
Zinke won the district by 3 percentage points in 2022, and by 7 points in 2024, when the presidential election lifted the Republican share of the vote to the level the state’s 2021 Districting and Apportionment Commission had expected when it drew Montana’s current political map.
Zinke announced in March that he wouldn’t seek reelection, and immediately threw his support and his campaign staff behind Flint.
With gas prices pushing Montana’s cost of living upward, and Trump’s popularity dipping, the Western District election has become Montana’s hottest race. In the Montana Free Press-Eagleton poll, conducted in the first week of September, Flint drew a 42% polling share when 375 registered voters were asked who they would vote for if the election were held at that moment. Forstag drew a 41% polling share. Nick Sheedy, the Libertarian candidate, drew 5%.
—Tom Lutey
On Oct. 13 at 8 a.m. MT, Montana Free Press and NonStop Local Missoula will host a livestreamed debate with Montana’s 1st Congressional District U.S. House candidates Aaron Flint and Sam Forstag. MTFP’s Tom Lutey and NonStop Local’s Bradley Warren will serve as panelists for the 60-minute debate, which will include questions prepared by the panel and submitted by MTFP readers.
The debate will be broadcast live on montanafreepress.org, MTFP’s YouTube channel, and on NonStop Local’s websites. The debate will also be broadcast on SWX.
