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How can polls get reasonably close when so many people ignore or block polling calls?
It’s an increasingly difficult problem for researchers. According to Pew Research Center, telephone polling response rates have fallen dramatically over the last 30 years. The center reported a 36% response rate in 1997. By 2022, the New York Times/Sienna poll reported a 0.4% response rate to its phone surveys.
I understand the reluctance. Debt collectors still call, looking for the man who had my phone number more than 15 years ago, so I tend to avoid answering unfamiliar numbers. Of course, that gets complicated when you’re a reporter who regularly receives calls from people you don’t know.
With all of this in mind, modern pollsters use a variety of methods to reach participants and statistical adjustments to try to account for differences between respondents and the broader population. This is an imperfect science, though, and as pollsters have relied more on statistical weighting to try to compensate for sampling biases, misses like we have seen in recent years, most famously 2016 for the presidential race, have become more common.
So, we here at Montana Free Press were pleased that our polling conducted two months before the 2026 elections offered a remarkably accurate picture of the eventual margins in Montana’s major federal races. Other high-quality polls taken closer to the election also showed results that closely aligned with the final margins.
Our Montana Insights poll in September showed Republican Aaron Flint leading Democrat Sam Forstag by just 1 percentage point in the Western U.S. House race, with a 6.0% margin of error. Forstag ultimately won by about 3.6 points. An Emerson College poll conducted immediately before Election Day found the candidates nearly tied.
In the Senate race, our poll showed Republican Kurt Alme leading independent Seth Bodnar by 8 points. Alme won by about 10.6 points. Our Eastern House District poll showed Republican Troy Downing ahead by 22 points. His actual margin was 26 points.
Roughly two months separated our polling from Election Day, leaving plenty of time for voters to change their minds and undecided voters to settle on candidates.
Despite that gap, our September surveys largely captured the relative competitiveness of Montana’s federal races, even when individual candidates’ final vote shares differed from their polling numbers.
But predicting election outcomes is only part of why we do polling. As MTFP founder John S. Adams and reporter Zeke Lloyd wrote when launching Montana Insights in 2025, the broader goal is to “reestablish a reliable, nonpartisan baseline for tracking public sentiment in the state.”
Getting people to answer the phone may be harder than ever, but these results show that good polling can still tell us a lot about what Montanans are thinking. I’ll probably still send the next unknown caller to voicemail. Come election season, I might make an exception. No promises, though.
— Jacob Olness
Following the Law ⚖️
The state of Montana filed a brief Monday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reverse a lower court’s decision that allows the massive nonprofit nature reserve American Prairie to keep grazing bison on federal land. It’s the latest in a contentious federal case over bison in the Missouri River Breaks.
Here’s the timeline, and what the newest filing means:
In May of this year, the Bureau of Land Management finalized a decision to rescind grazing permits for American Prairie. They alleged that the Taylor Grazing Act authorizes grazing only for production-oriented domestic livestock.
In August, American Prairie sued, saying that without an injunction on the federal decision, it would have to kill or move about 300 bison. And about a month later, a federal judge sided with the conservation organization. Bison could keep grazing on federal land in Phillips County.
Now, the state of Montana is appealing.
“The Bureau of Land Management made the correct and lawful decision to cancel these permits,” Gov. Greg Gianforte said in a press release. “Our administration will continue advocating for the generations of Montanans who have stewarded our lands with care.”
The crux of the matter comes down to a single question: Are bison livestock? According to state law, all bison in Montana fall under that category. But Gianforte and the BLM allege that bison at American Prairie are “rewilded,” and not covered by traditional interpretations of the term that encompass animals that are bred, grazed and slaughtered for human consumption.
American Prairie argues that its herd of nearly 1,000 animals has improved rangeland conditions. The Taylor Grazing Act, it claims, never explicitly mandates a “production-oriented” requirement for livestock. It alleges that the state and BLM are upending years of settled law.
The state of Montana has challenged previous federal permits that have allowed the group’s bison on BLM land since 2021.
The current legal drama will continue to play out in courts.
— Nick Mott
Verbatim 💬
“By creating relatively few competitive districts, the map insulated Republicans from significant losses even in a strong Democratic year.”
— Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, chair of the Montana Republican Legislative Campaign Committee
Montana’s legislative Republicans stayed relatively dry during Tuesday’s blue wave. While Democrats around the country took control of state legislatures and congressional seats, both the Montana Senate and House of Representatives remained in Republican hands. Republican insiders argue that Democrats sealed their own fate in 2023 when the state drew new political maps.
A five-person commission — two Republicans, two Democrats and a chairperson selected by the other four — was responsible for remaking the maps. The Democrats feared the GOP would gain a permanent supermajority in the state Legislature, so they favored maps that would create representation in the Legislature matching the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in the state, even if that meant some wonky district lines. Republicans preferred maps with more compactness and contiguity.
Chairperson Maylinn Smith broke a deadlock between the two parties, siding with Democrats.
Dan Stusek, a Republican who served on the redistricting commission, wrote on X this week that Democrats sealed their own minority status in the state Legislature.
“Had they drawn districts neutrally, they might have a chamber or two,” Stusek wrote. “They insulated themselves from a blue wave election.”
Kyle Schmauch, chief of staff and communications director for the Republican Senate majority, went a step further, telling Montana Free Press that Democrats on the commission decided to “gerrymander themselves into a guaranteed permanent minority.”
Democratic operatives and lawmakers, meanwhile, told MTFP this week that their party should have no regrets.
“Short answer, no,” Ciara Maxwell, director of the Montana Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told MTFP Wednesday. “I just think it’s a competitive map.”
— Zeke Lloyd
Hot Potato 🥔
Technical difficulties Sunday forced the Montana Lottery to shut down ticket sales for Montana Millionaire, a game with 720,000 $20 tickets and drawings for six $1 million winners. The state agency wrote in a statement this week that its vendor, Bally’s Intralot, had a bug in its system.
This is the 20th year of Montana Millionaire, which always launches ticket sales on Nov. 1. On Sunday, Montanans lined up at gas stations and supermarkets ahead of the 5:30 a.m. start time to buy tickets. At 9:25 a.m., the lottery acknowledged the Montana Millionaire purchasing system was experiencing technical problems. An hour and a half later, it postponed ticket sales.
“It’s like when you go out to turn your car on in the morning and it always works and then it doesn’t,” Bob Brown, director of the Montana Lottery, told Montana Free Press Friday.
In a statement this week, the Montana Lottery announced that ticket sales for Montana Millionaire would resume at 6:30 a.m. on Nov. 12. Brown said the vendor’s system “is functioning at 100%.”
“They have tested, retested and they have corrected the errors,” Brown said.
— Zeke Lloyd
For the Record 📣
It’s official: Montana has a new Jeopardy! champ.
Erica Doornek, 39, won four games of the cult favorite trivia show during tapings at the Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California, in September. And with more than $75,000 in winnings, she’s among the top contestants the state has ever produced. More on that in a bit.
Doornek gathered with friends at Tiny’s Tavern in Billings last Friday to watch her first episode. Her other three episodes aired earlier this week.
“It’s cheesy to say, but it’s very surreal watching yourself on television,” Doornek said.
As Doornek watched that first episode from Billings, amid boxes of pizza and pitchers of beer, her parents hosted a watch party in her hometown of Glasgow, four hours north, complete with homemade chili, trivia-themed games and Glasgow High Scottie pride.
Doornek got just one question wrong on her first show, related to fashion designers. She said Karl Lagerfeld, but the correct answer was Coco Chanel.
Among those she answered correctly was one about sensationalized news reporting: “What is yellow journalism?”
Doornek currently works as an administrative assistant at the Bureau of Reclamation but earned her undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Montana. She later worked as the copy desk chief at The Billings Gazette for five years. Her Montana roots run deep, and she drew on that for the show.
During her final Jeopardy! question, she wrote underneath her answer the letters F.I.F.P., a riddle for her hometown crowd that stood for “forged in Fort Peck.” She was born in Wolf Point, on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation; she grew up boating on the Fort Peck Dam, the roads for which her great-grandfather helped build; and she participated in the Fort Peck Summer Theater. Doornek said a couple of people from Glasgow correctly guessed what the mysterious initials stood for.
Doornek taped her final three episodes in a single day. The show staff had her change tops for each episode, and attendants freshened up her hair and makeup. She said the episodes all ran together, and it’s tough to remember what happened when. By the end of the day, her brain was tired. She started to stray from her play-it-safe strategy and began buzzing in even when she wasn’t certain of the answer.
And of course, the competition was stiff. Doornek said after getting to know some of her fellow contestants and developing a feel for their many areas of intelligence: “I was in awe of them.”
It’s difficult to track down an official, comprehensive list of Montana Jeopardy! contestants, and the show’s communications office didn’t respond to questions. But when Doornek was on set, producers told her she had tied for first place among Montana competitors. (A Stevensville woman and Montana State University alumna also won four games and $104,000 in 2019, but she listed her current city of residence in Utah, and not her hometown.)
“They were like, ‘We went and looked it up. The only other person from Montana who’s won four games was Liz Barnea, a librarian from Billings.’”
Barnea won $28,900 in 1990. Plugged into the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, that equals $75,543.57 in today’s dollars. Doornek didn’t have the precise figure of her earnings by press time. She said she knew it was greater than $75,000 and thought it was $75,401.
Doornek’s earnings will likely go toward a new vehicle. She’s got her eye on a hybrid.
I asked what, if anything, competing on Jeopardy! changed for her, or whether it would make her pivot any life plans.
“I don’t know what I could parlay this into,” Doornek mused. “I think I’ll just keep living my normal life and see what happens.”
— Phoebe Tollefson
The Gist 📌
There’s something strange to me about how much people love acronyms. If we can make a catchy batch of words out of a name, we sure will. But nobody seems to love an acronym more than the government.
The acronyms circling around my brain these days tend to be some amalgamation of BLM, DOI, NPS, and BAAJA, just to name a few. But there’s one, FAST-41, that piqued my interest when the governor’s office recently sent out a press release.
FAST-41 is a federal designation that can be assigned to large-scale infrastructure projects: think transmission lines, dams and broadband. Earlier this year, the Trump administration expanded the types of critical infrastructure that FAST-41 can cover to include data centers and mines. You may know the acronym from several mining exploration projects proposed in Montana that have received the FAST-41 designation, including the Sheep Creek Project in the Bitterroot and the Blue Copper Project outside Helena.
When a project is listed, it appears on this dashboard, where you can see timelines for each step in the permitting and environmental review process. There are two categories under a FAST-41 listing, and one comes with a fast-tracked process for a project to go from proposal to shovels in the ground.
Last week, Gov. Greg Gianforte announced that the state would sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU!) with the federal government to identify projects eligible for the FAST-41 listing and provide resources to state agencies to streamline the permitting.
Derf Johnson at the Montana Environmental Information Center (aka MEIC!) isn’t so sure it’s a good thing. He told me, “There’s room for a lot of political interference, ignoring state law and cutting the public out of the process.”
You can learn more about what FAST-41 is, and what this partnership could mean for Montana here. (Sorry, no answers on why we love acronyms.)
TTFN,
—- Ellis Juhlin
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
• Grizzly bear deaths have continued to climb in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, setting a modern record for the third consecutive year. Our friends at WyoFile dug into the details.
• In Great Falls, Benefis Health System, which recently opened a $16 million healthy aging center, announced this week that it was closing a clinic and ending some behavioral health services. The system cited financial challenges in its decision.
• Montana Democrats are divided and left wondering what it would have taken for their party to ride the blue wave into Montana’s open Senate seat in Tuesday’s election.
On Our Radar
Lauren — I want to give a big shoutout to JoVonne Wagner for taking the Malört shot like a champ (she didn’t even throw up) after the Bears flossed the Seahawks in their own stadium.
Ellis — As the days get colder and shorter, there’s nothing I love more than curling up next to a fire in my backyard ring and thinking about the holiday gifts I’ll be making for loved ones. I like to dust off my old Girl Scout badges and build these DIY firestarters with dryer lint and an empty toilet paper tube. Throw in a scented incense cone — pine is best in my opinion — and you’ve got a great upcycled gift that helps someone else enjoy the coziness!
Matt — I committed many minutes this week to reading a lengthy, globetrotting New Yorker article about microchip production. It’s the sort of story that reveals the extraordinary origins of the ordinary products that sit in our pockets all day.
Zeke — There’s something about elections that makes me want to go back in time and take up arms against the British. So this weekend, I plan to curl up on the couch and watch the classic American musical “1776.”
Mara — In blurry, rapid-fire weeks like this past one, some memories are just coming to the surface. In particular, I’m thinking back on the multitude of vital food deliveries I received from friends and family during election crunch time. They include: a drop-off of leftover Halloween candy from home, a 7:30 p.m. Tuesday coffee delivery from my childhood best friend and no less than three meal deliveries from my mom, including bagels for many MTFP staffers. It takes a village, doesn’t it?
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Lowdown is edited by Nick Ehli, with additional copy editing by Mara Silvers.
