2024 United States Senate election in Montana
Updated: Wikipedia source
The 2024 United States Senate election in Montana was held on November 5, 2024, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Montana. Republican businessman Tim Sheehy won his first term in office, defeating Democratic three-term incumbent Jon Tester. Despite the state's heavy partisan lean in favor of the Republican Party, Tester remained popular among his constituents. Because of this and Montana's historical inclination to ticket-split, the race was considered to be competitive. Early polling showed Tester to be leading or nearly even, but Sheehy later gained an edge. Tester was widely seen as being the most vulnerable incumbent running for re-election, due to Montana's strong Republican lean and the decline of split-ticket voting. Tester, a renowned centrist liberal, was first elected in 2006, when he narrowly defeated incumbent Republican senator Conrad Burns, and was reelected in 2012 and 2018. However, come Election Day in 2024, his vulnerability came to fruition as he lost his bid for a fourth term to Tim Sheehy by around 7 percentage points. Sheehy received roughly 52 % of the statewide vote to Tester's 45 %. Despite his loss, Tester still vastly outperformed Kamala Harris, who lost the state to Donald Trump in the concurrent presidential race by just under 20 percentage points. Tester also carried six counties that Trump concurrently won: Big Horn, Blaine, Hill, Lewis and Clark (Helena), Roosevelt, and Park. Tester received over 44,000 more raw votes than Harris, while Sheehy received over 32,000 less raw votes than Trump. Along with Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Tester was one of three incumbent senators to lose re-election in 2024. All three were first elected in 2006, defeating Republican incumbents, and won re-election in 2012 and 2018. This race was one of two 2024 U . Senate races in which Democratic senators sought re-election in states where Republican Donald Trump won in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, the other being Ohio. With Sheehy's victory, Republicans held both of Montana's Senate seats for the first time since 1911.