HELENA – A new poll shows Republican Steve Daines has a solid lead over Democrat Kim Gillan in the race for Montana’s open U.S. House seat.
A Lee Newspapers of Montana poll found Daines with support from 51 percent of likely voters while Gillan received 40 percent. Libertarian Dave Kaiser received 1 percent, and 8 percent are undecided.
Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc. of Washington, D.C., polled 625 registered voters on both cellular and land-line phones from Monday through Wednesday. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
“Obviously, Daines has a pretty clear advantage,” said Brad Coker, managing director of the polling firm. “Even if everything falls off to Gillan or the Libertarian, he’s still at 51 percent.”
The poll found male voters preferred Daines 58 percent to 34 percent, while women favored Gillan 46 percent to 44 percent.
Among voters who call themselves Independents, about a third of Montana voters, 54 percent said they plan to vote for Daines and 30 percent for Gillan.
The most recent poll shows Daines has increased his advantage from a Lee Newspapers of Montana poll taken six weeks ago, which found Daines was favored by 46 percent to 38 percent for Gillan. That earlier poll found 14 percent of voters undecided.
The candidates are vying to replace Republican U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, who is challenging Democrat U.S. Sen. Jon Tester for the Senate seat.
Daines, 50, a former technology executive from Bozeman, has never held political office. He cruised to an easy primary win after more than a year-and-a-half of campaigning, initially as a candidate for U.S. Senate before making way for Rehberg’s challenge of Tester. He’s running on a platform critical of Obama administration policies.
Gillan, a 60-year-old workforce training coordinator and state senator from Billings, is running on a promise to provide pragmatic, bipartisan solutions.