Obama Holds Big Lead in Montana Poll


By Jonathan Weber, 5-25-08

 
 

Barack Obama has a healthy 52%-to-35% lead over Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic voters heading into the June 3 Montana primary, according to a Lee Newspapers poll. That’s not a big surprise- Obama has done very well in the Mountain West and the Pacific Northwest, racking up a massive win in Idaho earlier this year and taking the Oregon primary handily last week.

Obama has also been using his big cash horde to blanket Montana with television and online advertising, an effort Clinton cannot match.

Bill Clinton is stumping the state for his wife again this weekend, asserting that a win in Montana could make his wife the nominee. It’s probably true that an Obama loss here would do some serious damage, calling into question his appeal to independent voters and his ability to redraw the electoral map in the fall by winning in at least some Mountain West states. But such an outcome looks unlikely, with Obama on track to win huge margins in the college towns of Missoula and Bozeman, as well as elsewhere in Western Montana and among Native Americans. That should more than make up for his relative weakness in the older, poorer rural counties of Eastern Montana.

Yet the Lee poll also shows Obama trailing Republican John McCain in a general election. Indeed, McCain, with his military backround and reputation as something of a maverick, is in many ways a perfect candidate for Montana. Obama hopes to be able to tap the same enthusiasm and independent appeal that enabled Sen. Jon Tester to defeat Conrad Burns in 2006 - but McCain promises to be a more formidable opponent than the scandal-scarred Burns.



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