How Is Montana Like New Jersey?

How is Montana like New Jersey? Well, Montana ends in a vowel and New Jersey has many “notable” citizens whose names end in a vowel. In fact, both things are linked together by legendary fictional mob boss Tony Montana (AKA Scarface).
They also both have close Senate races which seem to have a similar late thrust, with voters “coming home.” In NJ, with momentum switching back and forth, the late surge seems to be going Menendez way, as Democrats and those Independents who lean Dem, returning to the fold. In Montana, Burns seems to be closing ground as Republicans come home. The GOP is pouring money into Montana and Bush is taking a trip there today – although there is little evidence that W showing up anywhere has helped a candidate. Still, Montana is far enough away from the D.C. Republican stench that seeing the President in the flesh might excite them. One interesting thing about Montana: we have yet to see one Republican internal poll from there. There are various internal polling organizations associated with the parties; Strategic Visions is a Republican one, Global Strategies and Lake Associates are Democrat oriented ones. These tend to be a bit slanted toward the party who paid for them, and usually some positive ones are released to fire up the troops or get a bandwagon effect rolling. In general there have been far more Democratic polls released this cycle than Republican ones, which is not surprising, considering the general trend. You would think that with a race as close as the Montana one is that there would be one or two of these showing Mr. Burns ahead. Surely if there was one, the GOP would have gotten it out there. We can only assume from the lack of this that there hasn’t been one and that could well be a positive sign for Tester.