Republican challenger Tim Sheehy leads incumbent Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., by 8 points in a new AARP poll.
Sheehy, a businessman, leads Tester 49% to 41% in a four-way race of 600 likely voters in a survey commissioned in late August. Libertarian candidate Sid Daioud polls at 4% with Green Party candidate Michael Downey earning 1%; 4% of voters said they were undecided.
In a head-to-head race, Sheehy leads Tester, 51% to 45%.
A Sheehy win likely leads to Republicans controlling the Senate. Democrats have a 51-49 edge, but Republicans are expected to flip West Virginia and would just need one more to take control.
Boosting Sheehy is former President Donald Trump, who leads Vice President Kamala Harris in the state, 56% to 41%. In 2020, Trump defeated President Joe Biden by 16 points in Montana.
Trump holds 9-point edge over Harris among independent voters, while Tester leads with independent voters in his race.
"Trump is running ahead of Sheehy with almost every age and partisan group, but Tester is not overperforming Harris by enough to overcome the large gap at the top of the ticket," the bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward and David Binder Research wrote in their memo. "Tester and Harris have both nearly maxed out their vote share among Democrats."
Tester has yet to endorse Harris for president. Montanans said immigration and rising costs were their top issues in the election.
In the AARP poll, 1,064 likely voters were surveyed, including a statewide representative sample of 600 likely voters, and an oversample of 464 likely voters 50 and older. The survey was conducted Aug. 25-29.
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