Free Republic

Republican Congressman Steve Daines is well ahead of interim Senator John Walsh and fellow Democrat John Bohlinger in Rasmussen Reports’ first look at the 2014 U.S. Senate race in Montana. A new statewide telephone survey of Likely Montana Voters finds that Daines leads Walsh by 14 points – 51% to 37%. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, and nine percent (9%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) (Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook. The...

PPP's first Montana Senate poll since Steve Daines officially got into the race finds him starting out with pretty substantial leads for both the general and primary elections. Daines leads Democratic challengers John Bohlinger and John Walsh by spreads of 51/36 and 52/35 respectively. He also has a 66/7 lead in the primary over Champ Edmunds. Daines' leads aren't a function of his being particularly popular. He has a 37/42 approval spread, down a net 13 points from June when he was at 41/33. It does appear anger over the shutdown has had some effect on his image. But the...

Former Montana Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger just jumped in the Montana Senate race last week – but he says national Democrats are already trying to push him out. Foremost among them, according to the Democratic candidate? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “[Reid] said, you know, ‘John, you know, you’re a nice guy, but we’ve chosen Walsh. We’d like you to drop out. We don’t want to have a primary,’” Bohlinger said, according to local news reports. Bohlinger was referring to current Lt. Gov. John Walsh, the preferred choice of the party to run for the seat of retiring Democratic...

Former Montana Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger announced his 2014 Senate campaign this week with a bang. Instead of giving a mundane announcement of his intentions to run as a Democrat for the outgoing Max Baucus‘ Senate seat, Bohlinger made a comparison between House Republicans and the Taliban. “We need to challenge the Tea Party representatives who like the Taliban shut our country down,” Bohlinger told reporters, according to the Billings Gazette. The Montana paper reports that Bohlinger compared to the House GOP’s actions in last month’s government shutdown to that of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7,...