Slamming Home The Point

So how did Montana Republican Greg Gianforte win last night's special election to replace Trump Interior Secretary' Ryan Zinke's House seat by 7 points, despite being charged with assault the day before the election?

I'm glad you asked.

One, Montana went for Trump by 21 points in November.  Gianforte ran and won by 7.  That was a huge swing away from Trump, but it wasn't quite enough for Democrat Rob Quist to get the win.  It should still worry the hell out of the GOP though.  13-14 point swings towards the Dems in the generic Congressional ballot means a huge Dem takeover in November 2018 if that holds.

Two, Libertarian Mark Wicks got 6% of the vote.  If Wicks wasn't in the race at all, this would have been much closer.  Yes, Quist still would have lost as Gianforte got more than 50% +1 of the vote, but it would have been a 2-3 point win rather than 7-8.  And that would have been a complete shocker.  If you assume that Wicks got a healthy amount of anti-Gianforte votes that would have gone to Quist, Wicks definitely helped Gianforte.

Three, Dems gave up on this race far too early.

While we are all talking about #Montana here is a chart that shows you a breakdown of outside spending in this race. pic.twitter.com/0tKoFiIdx8

— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) May 26, 2017

C'mon.  Quist was outspent almost 10-1.  And yet when Dems chose to spend money to help Dem Gov. Steve Bullock win re-election and stayed competitive on campaign spending, Bullock was able to beat Gianforte by 4 points even as Trump got a 21 point win in the state.

Dems abandoned Quist, period.  The money wasn't there.  The GOP money was and they won.  By the time the Dems realized they had a race on their hands, the GOP upped the money they spent on it again.

Yes, it cost the GOP $5 million to defend Montana's at-large House seat.  But they won.

Here endeth the lesson.