Campaign Beat: 2026 election wrap-up

Democrats pull off an upset in Montana’s U.S. House race. The Senate race goes as expected with an easy Republican victory. The Senate loss is seen as a missed opportunity for Montana Democrats as their party sweeps several congressional seats across the country. The Supreme court race is a runaway for Amy Eddy. And Montanans say yes to all three ballot initiatives, with one already facing a court challenge.

Campaign Beat is MTPR's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Rob Saldin of the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center and Political Science Department, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau.

Sally Mauk Seaborn, you and Carly Graf had a story that described Montana's election this way: "The blue wave that swept across the country tickled the beaches of Montana politics Tuesday night", which I think is my favorite sentence of this election season. And you said that, in part, because Montana elected its first Democrat to the U.S. House since Pat Williams in 1994, the year Sam Forstag was born.

Seaborn Larson Right. Flint did reliably well in these Republican rural counties. Those were the first results that trickled in, but then about 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Forstag went up when we got our first round of numbers from Missoula and he pretty much never looked back. Forstag ultimately ended up with 68% of the vote in Missoula. That's a 23,000-vote advantage over Flint in the biggest voting county in the district. Gallatin is a little bit bigger by population but cast 5,000 fewer ballots on Tuesday. The politics there are kind of purple - a liberal city in a redder county. Forstag ended up with 12,000 more votes there. In Flathead County, a ruby red corner of the state, Flint finished with about 11,000 more votes than Forstag, and I frankly expected him to end up with a bigger margin there, especially after President Donald Trump held a rally in Kalispell a few weeks before election day. But Forstag ultimately claimed 50.3% of the vote, a bit more than 9,000 ballots cast in his favor over Flint. If you look at the tally for Libertarian Nick Sheedy, he finished with 7,500 votes, who even if those had gone to Flint, Forstag still would have prevailed here. This race wasn't officially called until Thursday, but Flint called Forstag to concede a little after midnight on election day. According to Forstag, his very next call was to Republican Congressman Troy Downing to say, essentially, let's get to work finding some common ground.

Sally Mauk Forstag was consistent in his message, Rob, of making everyday Montanans' lives better. Here's what he said:

Sam Forstag "Beyond that, it's exactly what we're talking about here. My priority is helping to build a politics that has space for working people."

Sally Mauk And I think, Rob, Forstag did a good job of convincing working Montanans that he's one of them, and he did a better job of that than his opponent, Aaron Flint.

Rob Saldin Yeah, right, Sally. Obviously, Forstag had the very good fortune to be running in a cycle that turned out to be the best that Democrats have seen in decades. But you're right, he was successful in pulling off something that Democrats have been struggling to do in recent cycles. He was able to maintain a persona and a message that was quite well suited to a more traditional working-class audience. The kind of thing that used to be quite common in the Democratic Party, but that has faded as the party has come to reflect the outlook of college-educated professionals.

Sally Mauk I dropped by Forstag's election watch party, Rob, and I was by far the oldest person there by several centuries, and the youthfulness of his supporters was an unusual sight for an election party.

Rob Saldin Sally, he was able to not only keep that sort of traditional, older, working-class audience, but he also clearly captured the youth vote and the more progressive end of the Democrats' ideological spectrum. He was on the one hand able to, not exactly be a card-carrying member of the DSA, but kind of be DSA-adjacent, particularly when he was palin' around with Bernie and AOC. That plays to a lot of the young people. Yet, at the same time, he got endorsed by the Blue Dogs, that centrist faction of the Democratic Party in the House with roots dating back all the way to the Democratic Leadership Council in the '90s and Clinton-era, third-way moderation. So he managed to do both – get that old, kind of traditional Democratic voter, while at the same time really tapping into the spirit and the energy of young progressives.

Sally Mauk Which was a winning combination, obviously. And the Senate race, Seaborn, went close to what was predicted. Republican Kurt Alme won easily over independent Seth Bodnar, and Alani Bankhead was a distant third, the Democrat. And here's what Alme had to say.

Kurt Alme "As your senator, I will give everything that I have to give to our state and all of our people who have given so much to me. So now, let's go take care of business"

Sally Mauk 'Let's go take care of business', Seaborn.

Seaborn Larson Yeah, Sally, as predicted, Alme pretty much moonwalked into this Senate seat. The breakdown here is that Alme had a 50,000-vote advantage over Bodnar. Bankhead's statewide total was 58,000. Alme in the final week before election day spent most of his time taking care of business out in the eastern district with Downing. That's not somewhere you'd expect to find candidates looking to drive out a ton of votes. In football terms, it'd be kind of like those two were running out the clock in a victory formation. Bankhead on Wednesday defended her role in this race and in a statement, she said, "We don't fix the party by denouncing the party or running from it. We fix the party by listening to the people and doing the work." But of course, Bankhead's refusal to drop out of this race drove a serrated wedge into the Montana Democratic Party where many people were at odds with whether to support Bankhead or Bodnar. When I talked on Tuesday night with Emily Marburger, the Executive Director of the Montana Dems, she was really looking at the excitement around Forstag's campaign and trying to figure out how to bottle up some of the lightning there and kind of share it around the state.

Sally Mauk Rob, the Monday morning quarterbacking in this Senate race is going to go on for a long time with Montana Democrats. Here's how Seth Bodnar framed his independent run.

Seth Bodnar "We chose a hard road, and we walked that road together. We didn't lose our way. And we showed that there is a different path forward for politics in this state and in this country."

Sally Mauk And did he show that, Rob, a 'different path'?

Rob Saldin No, I don't think so, Sally. And that's not to say that there isn't a logic to running as an independent. There is. The Democratic Party brand, it is a problem in Montana. And notably, it's a problem that's distinct from left of center politics. We got another reminder of this with the Supreme Court election and the ballot initiatives this week. Once again, we see Montanans show that they have no problem supporting judges and policies that are coded left. But it's a lot tougher somehow when you put the Democratic Party stamp on it. So you can see why the independent route was intriguing. But as was clear from the very beginning, Sally, an absolutely essential element of that strategy is that the Democratic candidate stands down. And they did that in several other states, but not in Montana. Well, that's not an optional part of the plan. If you can't get that piece dialed in, you're obviously better off running as a Democrat.

Sally Mauk MSU political scientist Kal Munis said Bodnar’s race hurt down-ballot Democratic candidates and was, "A total failure"

Rob Saldin Right, Sally. There's a lot of anger and bitterness out there, and that's understandable. Just to take a step back, if you're not a Republican, this Senate race was an enormous, missed opportunity. The stars just don't align very often like they did this year. It reminds me in a lot of ways of 2006, when [Jon] Tester won his first Senate election. It was another one of these perfect storms for Democrats. Nationally, it was a wave election. The incumbent in Montana, Conrad Burns, was way past his prime and made some serious mistakes. And still, Tester barely eked it out, even in those ideal conditions. But a win is a win, and he went on to represent Montana in the Senate for 18 years. Well, there was a similar setup this year, right? Just look at some of those Senate seats that flipped. Montana really should have been in the mix. I'm not sure it would have been enough this year, even if you were unified behind a single candidate, but the tragedy of it for those who don't want a Republican in that seat is that they didn't even really give it a shot in a cycle where there was a legitimate path to victory. And Kal's right. There were these trickle-down effects. You look at what happened in the Legislature. One could imagine in a year like this, Democrats picking up a lot more than just few seats that they did.

Sally Mauk Speaking of those down-ballot races, Seaborn, Republicans have maintained the majority in the upcoming Legislature, but Democrats did make a few gains.

Seaborn Larson Right. Democrats picked up two seats in both chambers of the Montana Legislature. The redistricting maps adopted a few years ago mean that most seats aren't competitive in the general election at the Montana Legislature anymore. So, Republicans will still have a bicameral majority, but the final party breakdowns in the chambers are going to be 56-44 in the House and 30-20 in the Senate. The "Nasty Nine" that we talked about earlier this year looks like it'll be back with a different mix of nine Republican lawmakers who are likely to build a coalition with Democrats again. Through this lens, that majority is going to have a 29-21 voting bloc in the Senate, enough to run the show in a bit bigger margin than they had back in 2025.

Sally Mauk Rob, has Montana's bright red maybe faded to fuchsia after this election? Are Montanans echoing a national trend towards less extremism and back to the middle? What do you think?

Rob Saldin Sally, I think they got a critical foothold, obviously, in that western district. That's at least a sign of life. But even in this year, with the biggest national swing to Democrats in half a century, Forstag still only won by three . And of course, that was just in the western half of the state, which is far more favorably inclined towards Democrats than the statewide electorate. And as Seaborn just went over, Democrats only picked up a few seats in the Legislature. So, this is still a pretty red state and the results in Montana might even be said to be a bit underwhelming relative to the rest of the country. But you've got to start somewhere and sending the first Democrat to the House of Representatives since Pat Williams retired, that's a nice start.

Sally Mauk Seaborn, we mentioned earlier, the Supreme Court race was won by Amy Eddy, and that's a surprisingly easy victory for her over Dan Wilson.

Seaborn Larson Right. Amy Eddy won with 59% of the vote, but that figure doesn't really illustrate the clobbering she laid on Dan Wilson. This was supposed to be a close race. She came out of the primary with 7,500 more votes than Wilson. When the last ballot was counted on Thursday, she won by more than 85,000 votes. That's the largest margin of any Supreme Court race in the last 10 years. A lot of that is attributable to the $3 million in outside spending that supported her, but Wilson also ran a fairly conservative-coded campaign, and this was clearly the wrong year to take that approach.

Sally Mauk And lastly, all three initiatives passed.

Seaborn Larson That's right, by huge margins - 65% or better. The Montana Plan, which got most of the spotlight this year, set out to ban corporate spending in elections, that's already drawn a lawsuit from the Montana Republican Party and a couple other conservative groups challenging it against the precedent set in the 2010 Citizens United decision. We'll be following that case probably for years to come now.

Sally Mauk Right, and that lawsuit was expected of course.

Seaborn Larson Very much so.

Sally Mauk The election season is over, and that means this is the last episode of Campaign Beat for this round. And I want to thank our stellar behind-the-scenes producers, Chris Moyles and Ed O'Brien, who make us sound good every week. Rob and Seaborn, as always, it's been such a treat to talk politics with you guys every week, especially this campaign season. It's been really fun. Thank you so much.

Seaborn Larson Hear, hear. Thanks so much, Sally.

Rob Saldin Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Sally.

Campaign Beat is Montana Public Radio's weekly political analysis program. MTPR's Sally Mauk is joined by Rob Saldin of the University of Montana’s Mansfield Center and Political Science Department, and Seaborn Larson, Senior Reporter at Lee Newspapers’ Montana State News Bureau. Tune in on-air Fridays at 5:45 p.m. during All Things Considered, or Saturdays at 9:45 a.m., before Weekend Edition. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Campaign Beat: 2026 election wrap-up

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