{"id":1488516,"date":"2024-09-07T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-07T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1488516"},"modified":"2024-09-07T13:55:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-07T17:55:00","slug":"in-pivotal-senate-race-republican-takes-significant-lead-over-incumbent-democrat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/in-pivotal-senate-race-republican-takes-significant-lead-over-incumbent-democrat\/1488516\/","title":{"rendered":"In Pivotal Senate Race, Republican Takes Significant Lead Over Incumbent Democrat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden\">In Pivotal Senate Race, Republican Takes Significant Lead Over Incumbent Democrat<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item\">\n<p><strong>Democrats hoping to maintain control of the United States Senate in 2025 have been jolted by a new poll <\/strong>that shows Montana&#8217;s incumbent Democratic senator trailing his Republican challenger by 8 points with under two months to go until Election Day.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aarp.org\/pri\/topics\/voter-research\/politics\/montana-older-voter-survey-2024\/?CMP=RDRCT-PRI-POLT\">AARP poll<\/a> found <strong>49% of Montana voters back Republican Tim Sheehy and 41% support incumbent Jon Tester,<\/strong> while the Libertarian candidate takes 4% and the Green Party, 1%.\u00a0Sheehy appears to be the beneficiary of Donald Trump&#8217;s popularity in the state: The former president has a commanding <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2024\/09\/05\/poll-sheehy-tester-montana-senate-race-00177518\">56% to 41%<\/a> lead. He won the state by 16 points in 2020 and 21 in 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Democrats are defending 23 Senate seats in 2024, compared to just 11 for the Republicans.\u00a0<strong>The GOP needs to flip only two seats<\/strong> to wrest control of the upper chamber back from the Democrats.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/sheehy-at-hangar-2048x1365.jpeg?itok=QwjVi5w2\"><strong>A former Navy SEAL, 37-year-old Sheehy is the founder and CEO of aerial firefighting company Bridger Aerospace.\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sheehy&#8217;s support is strongest among voters over age 49 years<\/strong>, who favored him by 16 points. That block is also the most likely to vote, with a whopping <a href=\"https:\/\/press.aarp.org\/New-AARP-Montana-Poll\">92% describing themselves as &#8220;extremely motivated&#8221;<\/a> to cast a ballot, compared to 77% of voters 18 to 49. The results come <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2024\/09\/05\/montana-senate-aarp-poll-tester-sheehy\">despite a Democratic spending advantage<\/a> in the race, with the leftist party spending $128 million compared to the GOP&#8217;s $109 million.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Republicans strategists are buoyed by the polling, and suggest Sheehy may well outperform them. &#8220;Even in the 2020 Senate race, which Steve [Daines] won by double digits, we never saw numbers as strong as we are seeing now from Tim Sheehy,&#8221; NRSC Executive Director Jason Thielman tells\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2024\/09\/05\/montana-senate-aarp-poll-tester-sheehy\"><em>Axios<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The new Montana poll prompted the University of Virginia&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/centerforpolitics.org\/crystalball\/montana-senate-race-moves-from-toss-up-to-leans-republican\/\">Center for Politics<\/a> to <strong>move the status of the contest from &#8220;toss-up&#8221; to &#8220;leans Republican,&#8221; <\/strong>noting\u00a0that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;<strong>History and recent trends are just not on Tester\u2019s side<\/strong>, as we have mentioned previously. He is one of a relatively small number of partisan outliers in either chamber of Congress, holding a Senate seat that the other party won by 16 points in the most recent presidential election. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The race is seen as essential for Democratic ambitions to retain their hold on the Senate in 2025.\u00a0<strong>&#8220;If Tester does lose&#8230;Democrats will have no path to win the Senate majority<\/strong> unless they can somehow put a currently Republican-held seat in play,&#8221; writes the Center for Politics&#8217; Kyle Kondik, noting that <strong>Democrats are considering a stronger, long-shot push to dislodge Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Florida Sen. Rick Scott<\/strong>, whose races are both rated as &#8220;Likely Republican.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The upshot of this [Montana] rating change is that there are now 51 Senate seats rated as Safe, Likely, or Leaning Republican, so <strong>this move solidifies the Republicans as clear favorites to flip control of the Senate<\/strong> this November,&#8221;\u00a0writes Kondik.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/assets.zerohedge.com\/s3fs-public\/inline-images\/2024_09_06_Senate_Map_600.png?itok=sQzdaPT8\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The switch in Montana&#8217;s status <strong>leaves Ohio as the only race still considered a toss-up<\/strong> by the Center. That race also has Democrats on the defensive, with incumbent Sherrod Brown facing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/trump-endorsed-moreno-wins-bigly-ohio-gop-senate-primary\">Trump-backed candidate Bernie Moreno<\/a>. The RealClearPolitics poll average has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearpolling.com\/polls\/senate\/general\/2024\/ohio\/brown-vs-moreno\">Moreno down 3.6%<\/a>.\u00a0In March, he handily won a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/trump-endorsed-moreno-wins-bigly-ohio-gop-senate-primary\">bitter, three-way primary battle<\/a> that saw him defeat the establishment favorite who&#8217;d been endorsed by Gov. Mike DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman, and who outspent Moreno.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Against their two-flipped-seat goal, the Republicans seemingly have one firmly in their pocket<\/strong> already, as 73-year-old West Virginia Democrat-turned-Republican Governor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fox5dc.com\/news\/west-virginias-senate-race-jim-justice-glenn-elliott\">Jim Justice<\/a> has a <a href=\"https:\/\/projects.fivethirtyeight.com\/polls\/senate\/2024\/west-virginia\/\">34-point lead<\/a>\u00a0in the race for the seat of retiring Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Manchin.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>      <span class=\"field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden\"><a title=\"View user profile.\" href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/users\/tyler-durden\" class=\"username\">Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden\">Sat, 09\/07\/2024 &#8211; 09:55<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u200b<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/pivotal-senate-race-republican-takes-significant-lead-over-incumbent-democrat\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/pivotal-senate-race-republican-takes-significant-lead-over-incumbent-democrat<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Pivotal Senate Race, Republican Takes Significant Lead Over Incumbent Democrat Democrats hoping to maintain control of the United States Senate in 2025 have been&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1488517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1488516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1488516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1488516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1488517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1488516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1488516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1488516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}