More registered voters in Montana’s Eastern U.S. House District said they would vote for Republican Rep. Troy Downing, the incumbent, than for Democrat Brian Miller if the election were held today, according to a new Montana Free Press-Eagleton poll conducted between Aug. 27 and Sept. 7.
If a respondent indicated they would vote for someone not on the ballot, or not vote at all, the poll asked a follow-up question about which named candidate they leaned toward. Including the leaners, Downing was 22 percentage points ahead of Miller, an attorney from Helena.
According to the poll, 48% of registered voters residing in the eastern district, which includes Great Falls, Helena, Billings and Miles City, said they would vote for Downing if the election were held today, while 26% said they would vote for Miller and 9% said they would vote for independent candidate Michael Eisenhauer, a Great Falls cardiologist. Another 5% said they would support Libertarian candidate Patrick McCracken. The remainder did not identify a preference.
The poll also asked respondents about Downing’s job performance. Among Eastern District registered voters, Downing had a 43% approval rating and a 36% disapproval rating. For comparison, the same poll indicates that President Donald Trump had a 42% approval rating in Montana and a 53% disapproval rating.
Jeremy Johnson, a political science expert at Carroll College in Helena, told MTFP he isn’t surprised by the survey results. He noted “softness in Troy Downing’s numbers,” but said the district remains very difficult for a Democrat to win.
“Anything is possible, but it would still be a significant upset for Downing not to win the election,” Johnson said.
Downing did not respond to MTFP’s request for comment on the poll.
Downing’s major-party opponent in the general election, Miller, has more name recognition now among Eastern District registered voters than he did during an earlier MTFP-Eagleton poll in May. In the more recent poll, 60% of respondents recognized Miller’s name, up from 36% in May.
Miller told MTFP this week that he plans to continue traveling the district to meet voters face-to-face.
“We’ll see what happens and we’ll keep doing what we can do,” he said.
“The less money you have, the harder it is to get your message out,” Miller said. He reported about $3,000 in cash on hand at the end of June, according to FEC filings, while Downing reported about $650,000.
Meanwhile, 47% of poll respondents didn’t recognize independent candidate Michael Eisenhauer’s name. Eisenhauer told MTFP this week, “We need to fix that, and we will.”
Kal Munis, a political science expert at Montana State University, told MTFP he is surprised by Eisenhauer’s relatively muted performance. According to the poll, about 9% of registered voters said they would vote for Eisenhauer if the election were held today, trailing Democrat Miller’s 26%. Munis noted that in 2022, independent candidate Gary Buchanan received more votes than Democrat Penny Ronning in the Eastern District. Munis attributes some of Miller’s advantage over Eisenhauer to a national political environment currently more favorable to Democrats, partly the result of midterm elections historically tending to favor the party that doesn’t hold the White House.
“The Democrats have the wind at their backs right now, and I think you’re seeing Miller benefit a little bit from that,” Munis said.
Jessi Bennion, a political science professor at Carroll College, said the margin between Downing and Miller is too wide — and Eisenhauer’s support is too small — for the independent to qualify as a spoiler.
“If you added Eisenhauer and [Miller’s] numbers together and then that was almost Troy Downing’s number, yeah, then it would be a spoiler,” Bennion said. “That’s how hard it is for Democrats in the Eastern District.”
This Montana Insights Poll surveyed registered voters in Montana who were invited by text message to complete an online survey. Data was collected from August 27, 2026, to September 7, 2026. Participants were recruited using a probability-based method, meaning they were randomly drawn from the state’s registered voter file, so every voter had a known chance of being invited. The results were weighted during analysis to reflect the demographics of Montana’s registered voters. The margin of error for Eastern District voters is 5.8%. The full methodology is available to review here.
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