This piece is part of MTFP’s 2026 poll week, where we’re exploring data on how Montana voters feel about their elected officials, environmental concerns, immigration enforcement and other issues.

A majority of Montanans believe there is the right amount of federal land in the state, according to a recent poll conducted by Montana Free Press in coordination with Rutgers University.

About one quarter of respondents, 24%, said there was too much federal land in the state, compared to 21% who said there was too little. 

Additionally, despite the fact that federal land transfer appears in both the state and national GOP party platforms, a majority of Republicans polled, 62%, said there is the right amount or too little federal land in Montana. About 96% of Democrats and 81% of independents also said they feel that way.

Melissa Weddell, a professor who studies recreation and tourism at the University of Montana, said she’s not surprised that the MTFP-Eagleton poll demonstrates bipartisan support for federal lands — even though Montanans occasionally express frustration with the way federal agencies manage natural resources and growing numbers of recreational users.

“They are where anyone can go. They can go for free. They can see people of all different sizes and colors and backgrounds. It really is a phenomenal system,” Weddell said. “They are the foundation of democracy.”

Montanans’ keen engagement with public land issues could be explained, at least partially, by their regular use of federal land. Polling conducted by Colorado College last year as part of its State of the Rockies initiative found that Montanans are more likely to report regular use of national public lands than residents of the seven other Western states polled. 

Nearly 30% of Montanans, according to the Colorado College poll, reported visiting public land more than 20 times over the previous year, while just 8% of Montanans said they hadn’t made any visits in the last year to a national public land, such as a national park, national forest, national monument or national wildlife refuge.

Federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service oversee about one-third of the land in Montana. Congressional negotiations over federal land ownership and management played prominent roles in last year’s debate over President Trump’s massive spending package. The issue also featured in Montana lawmakers’ 2025 discussion of a failed resolution to support Utah in a land-ownership fight that state has pending in the federal court system. 

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, made multiple attempts to include a proposal to transfer Bureau of Land Management holdings out of the federal estate in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the multi-trillion-dollar budget package that made sweeping changes to federal tax, health care and natural resource policies. But the bill garnered the necessary votes to pass both chambers only after the land-sale amendments were stripped from the final package. 

The land transfer issue cast Montana’s federal delegation into the national spotlight. U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, who represents Montana’s Western District in Congress, staked out an early position against land sales, declaring the issue his “San Juan Hill.” Other Western Republicans followed suit, asserting they would not vote for Trump’s megabill with the land sale provision in it. Zinke’s colleague in the Senate, Steve Daines, took a different approach. He negotiated with Lee when the bill was before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to ensure that federal lands in Montana would be barred from sale.

Public land transfer advocates like Lee argue that there is too much land in the federal estate, particularly in states such as Utah and Nevada, where the BLM is the state’s largest land manager. They often also argue that federal agencies mismanage the land and that state governments are more responsive to local recreational and commercial users. 

Those who support keeping federal land under the umbrella of federal land managers argue that transferring ownership to the state government opens the door to the eventual sale of that land to private individuals and corporations. They also maintain that state agencies don’t have the budget to cover high-dollar expenditures for wildfire suppression, a dynamic that they say could produce financial pressures to sell public lands to private owners.

State lawmakers also contemplated federal land ownership when the legislature was in session last year. Two-thirds of legislators in the Montana House of Representatives voted down a resolution that sought to support Utah in its legal attempt to wrest control of 18.5 million acres of Bureau of Land Management-administered federal land. House Democrats were united in their opposition to that bill, which garnered the support of a majority of the body’s 58 Republicans.

The U.S. Forest Service is the largest single landowner in Montana by acreage. It manages 17 million acres of land in the state, as compared to 8 million acres under Bureau of Land Management control and 1 million acres of National Park Service holdings.

The MTFP-Eagleton poll surveyed 801 registered voters through telephone interviews and text-to-web questionnaires. Data was collected from Dec. 23, 2025 to Jan. 3, 2026. The poll, which was weighted to reflect the demographics of the state’s voters, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

This piece is part of the Montana Insights project, which is commissioning rounds of polling to help MTFP readers understand public sentiment on key Montana policy issues. Further findings from the Dec. 2025-Jan. 2026 poll are available here.

The post 75% of voters want Montana to have at least as much federal land as it does now appeared first on Montana Free Press.

This story was updated at 10:42 p.m. with additional developments. 

In yet another twist in Montana’s western U.S. House District contest, Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen announced Tuesday that she will be running to replace U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke.

Jacobsen made her announcement on Facebook with a campaign video portraying her as both a political outsider and a favorite of President Donald Trump, who endorsed Jacobsen’s 2024 reelection campaign. In the ad, Jacobsen chops wood, rides a horse and drives an all-terrain vehicle in a forested area, before ending with a video of Trump repeatedly endorsing her for secretary of state. The Trump footage is from an August 2024 rally in Bozeman to promote U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy’s 2024 election. 

“Montana deserves a fighter who delivers America First leadership, lower costs, secure borders, and unleashed energy. No career politicians. Just results,” Jacobsen wrote on Facebook. “Are you with me?”

Jacobsen’s announcement follows Zinke’s statement Monday that he won’t seek a third term in Montana’s western U.S. House District, citing health problems. The development tees up a three-way primary with conservative statewide radio talk show host Aaron Flint and former Kalispell legislator Dr. Al Olszewski, who both joined the race Monday shortly after Zinke bowed out. 

In 2024, during her race for secretary of state, Jacobsen led all Republican statewide candidates in raw votes, including Donald Trump. She did the same as a first-time candidate in 2020. Term limits prevent Jacobsen from running for reelection.

Hours after Jacobsen’s video was posted touting her 2024 Trump endorsement, Flint’s campaign produced a letter from President Trump endorsing Flint’s congressional campaign. On Monday, Flint also touted his high-profile Republican endorsements, claiming support from Zinke, Gov. Greg Gianforte, Sen. Tim Sheehy, Eastern Montana Congressman Troy Downing and Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

Flint’s campaign manager, Heather Swift, posted a photo of Jacobsen fishing Monday off the coast of New Zealand, before the secretary of state announced her candidacy. Jacobsen had shared the same on Facebook. Swift, who is Zinke’s chief of staff, commented that Jacobsen’s fishing trip occurred when hundreds of candidates were registering their campaigns with Jacobsen’s office, which handles elections and business registrations.

“This week is the filing deadline for candidates across Montana. Christi Jacobsen is the MT SOS. One would expect the SOS to be in the freaking office for it. It didn’t exactly sneak up on her,” Swift said on X.

“But no! After spending taxpayer money on election mailers …she disappeared on a luxe vacation in New Zealand. Now she is trying to launch a campaign for MT-01, a district where she doesn’t live. Poor excuse for a doomed pre-governor run.”

The mailers Swift mentioned sparked controversy among Republican and Democratic state legislators in January over political messaging and cost. As previously reported by Montana Free Press, Jacobsen issued 467,000 postcards to Montana households with pictures of herself and Trump, promoting their attempts to identify non-citizen voters. The mailers cost $196,829 to produce and mail, according to the Montana Department of Administration.

The secretary of state’s staff had declined to disclose how much was spent.

Flint indicated months ago that he had moved from Billings to the Kalispell area in 2025 between school years. Kalispell is within the western congressional district. 

One Democratic observer, 50-year Montana campaign veteran Joe Lamson, told MTFP  Monday that while Flint and Olszewski offered his party a less difficult opponent than Zinke, he cautioned that a successful statewide candidate like Jacobsen, would present less of an opening for Democrats. 

“Neither of them, they have not run statewide races, and that’s important,” Lamson said. “I would think either Jacobsen or Knudsen are experienced and would be interested.”

Four Democrats — Ryan Busse, Russ Cleveland, Sam Forstag and Matt Rains — have announced their intentions to run in the primary in the western district.

The post Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen joins contest for Zinke’s western U.S. House District seat appeared first on Montana Free Press.

This piece is part of MTFP’s 2026 poll week, where we’re exploring data on how Montana voters feel about their elected officials, environmental concerns, immigration enforcement and other issues.

Montanans are bullish on solar, natural gas and hydropower for electricity generation — but wary of adding additional coal power to the state’s energy mix, according to a new Montana Free Press-Eagleton poll. 

The results of the poll, conducted in late December and early January, come as the Trump and Gianforte administrations work to expand domestic energy production amid a surge in demand wrought by growth in artificial intelligence and other electricity-intensive industries.

Respondents were presented with a list of electricity sources and asked if they thought Montana should produce more, less or about the same amount of power from each source. The options included hydropower, coal and wind — all of which play a prominent role in Montana’s current energy mix — as well solar and natural gas, which make up a smaller but growing contribution to the state’s energy grid.

According to an October analysis by Montana Free Press, the state’s single largest power producer is the 40-year-old coal-fired power plant in Colstrip, which is capable of generating up to 1,650 megawatts of electricity.

The largest class of generation in the state, in contrast, is hydropower: Western Montana dams can generate more than 2,500 megawatts of power when they’re operating at full capacity. 

A third behemoth in the energy landscape is wind. Since 2020, energy developers like Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Pacific Northwest utilities such as Avista and Puget Sound Energy have invested in massive wind projects collectively capable of generating more than 1,000 megawatts of power — and additional wind farms are planned.

Utility-scale solar energy makes a tiny share of Montana’s electricity mix, accounting for just 2% of the megawatt hours generated within the state’s borders. But it garnered the most enthusiasm in the poll, with 56% of respondents supporting additional solar generation. A similar percentage, 55%, said the same about natural gas, which accounts for nearly 700 megawatts of capacity distributed between seven small- and medium-sized plants.

Coal, which represents about 22% of the state’s current generation capacity, was much less popular. Just 36% of respondents supported additional coal-fired power and around the same number, 39%, said they want less.

Gov. Greg Gianforte and Montana’s federal delegation, all Republicans, are aligned with President Donald Trump in backing coal, which has fueled Montana’s largest power plant for more than 40 years. Jon Tester, the last Democrat to hold a statewide office, supported both renewable and fossil fuel energy sources during his tenure at the U.S. Senate, occasionally countering the Biden administration’s efforts to tighten emission regulations and restrict new federal coal leasing.

Despite the current delegation’s vigorous support for coal mining and the long-debated Colstrip plant, demand for the carbon-intensive fuel has waned in recent years as utility companies shift broadly to cheaper and cleaner power sources such as natural gas and solar.

Bob Morris, Montana Tech’s Lance Energy Chair, described Colstrip as a “vital” and reliable resource that has helped Montana be an energy exporter for many decades. Even so, he said, market and political conditions aren’t spurring future investment in coal. 

“With emissions and the political uncertainty, you won’t find anyone willing to invest in coal,” Morris said. “Maybe today’s administration is favorable, but in three years it may be a different administration.”

NorthWestern Energy, Montana’s largest utility company, has significantly expanded the amount of coal and natural gas in its portfolio in recent years, building a 175-megawatt gas plant in Laurel and acquiring expanded stakes in the Colstrip plant as climate legislation forces West Coast utilities to exit the facility.

Morris said there is a long list of solar developers eager to tie utility-scale projects into the electrical grid, but the weather-dependent nature of solar power can pose a challenge for utilities. The Trump administration’s move to nix tax incentives for renewable energy projects may have dampened investors’ appetite for new solar projects, he added. 

Shifting subsidies are also making things harder for wind developers looking to tap into the state’s ready supply of wind. Despite D.C. policymakers’ move to eliminate tax incentives for new wind projects, utilities in Washington State and mega-investors like Berkshire Hathaway Energy have invested billions of dollars in Montana wind farms in recent years and additional investments are planned.

Morris said that future hydropower expansion is unlikely because most of the state’s potential dam locations have already been developed. He said concerns about fish passage also merit consideration in hydropower discussions.

“Every single energy conversion has a negative environmental impact,” he said. “We need to look at which impacts we’re willing to live with.”

The MTFP-Eagleton poll surveyed 801 registered voters through telephone interviews and text-to-web questionnaires. Data was collected from Dec. 23, 2025 to Jan. 3, 2026. The poll, which was weighted to reflect the state’s population of registered voters, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

This piece is part of the Montana Insights project, which is commissioning rounds of polling to help MTFP readers understand public sentiment on key Montana policy issues. Further findings from the Dec. 2025-Jan. 2026 poll are available here.

The post Montanans want more solar, natural gas development, are less interested in new coal plants appeared first on Montana Free Press.

This story was updated on Monday at 4:57 p.m. with additional developments. 

U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke said he won’t seek reelection in Montana’s western U.S. House District on Monday, citing health problems. Shortly after his announcement, conservative talk radio firebrand Aaron Flint and former Kalispell legislator Dr. Al Olszewski announced plans to run in the Republican primary in June.

The development could improve the slim chance of a Democratic contender winning the race, according to one Democratic analyst.

“Neither Olzewski, nor Flint has general election experience for federal office,” said Joe Lamson, a veteran Democratic campaign manager who served on the 2020 districting commission that created the western congressional district. That detail could make a difference in the race — if no other Republican candidate is to step forward, he added. Candidates have until Wednesday, March 4 to file with the state.

Zinke, 64, has been elected as a Republican to represent Montana in the U.S. House four times since 2014. He said in his announcement that injuries sustained during his Navy SEAL career had caught up with him and that he needed surgery and time to recover.

“I have made the decision to leave office at the end of my fourth term and not seek re-election,” Zinke said in a letter to constituents, which he posted online.

The congressman had been expected to seek re-election in Montana’s western U.S. House District, which the Whitefish native has represented since 2023. Zinke was elected Montana’s at-large representative in 2014 and 2016, before the state was divided into two congressional districts following the 2020 census.

“I do not take this decision lightly and have informed President Trump, the Governor, and senior leadership of this difficult but necessary decision,” Zinke also wrote.

He stated that he is not chronically ill, but had nagging injuries from his military career.

Zinke gave no hints during a Friday visit to Butte that he would announce his retirement three days later. The congressman joined Interior Secretary Doug Burgum for a tour of the Montana Tech campus. He wore his trademark black cowboy hat and appeared relaxed and comfortable as the entourage went up and down stairs through the mining department’s labs and testing rooms. In an hour-long roundtable presentation, Zinke took questions from several reporters.

Zinke was appointed President Donald Trump’s first Interior secretary in 2017, but resigned from the position in 2019 during several investigations and political pressure.

Shortly after Zinke announced his retirement, talk radio personality Aaron Flint posted a dramatic campaign video on X, highlighting his role as a radio personality, family man and veteran, while invoking Donald Trump. He also issued a press release stating that he had been endorsed by Zinke, Gov. Greg Gianforte, Senator Tim Sheehy and other Republican officials. The listed contact for Flint’s campaign was Zinke’s chief of staff, Heather Swift. 

Flint, who hosts a three-hour, conservative statewide morning radio show from Billings, staffed Zinke’s office as an employee of the U.S. House Clerk for more than three months in 2017 after the representative resigned his at-large Montana district to become Interior secretary. Flint held the position until Gianforte was elected to replace Zinke in the 2017 special election.

Former congressional candidate Dr. Al Olszewski told Montana Free Press that he was filing to run as a Republican in the western district. Olszewski, a former Kalispell state senator, said he had been watching candidate filings to see if Zinke would run. He said that he suspected Zinke wouldn’t.

Zinke defeated Olszewski in the 2022 primary. The race was so close that it took a few days to confirm the outcome.

Four Democrats — Ryan Busse, Russ Cleveland, Sam Forstag and Matt Rains — have announced their intentions to run in the primary in the Western District. Zinke won the seat by 4 percentage points against Democrat Monica Tranel in 2022, and then 7.6 points in 2024 as an incumbent against Tranel again.

Lamson, who worked on many Montana Democratic campaigns including that of former U.S. Rep. Pat Williams, said that a successful statewide candidate like Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen or Attorney General Austin Knudsen running in the west would present a more difficult opponent for those Democratic hopefuls.

Forstag issued a press release declaring the district an “open race” without Zinke. 

“Ryan Zinke quit because he saw what was coming: all of us. People across western Montana who are hungry for real representation and a new generation of leadership,” Forstag said.

He and other Democratic candidates have previously told MTFP that they expected dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump, who won more than 58% of the Montana vote in 2024, to make the Western District competitive as they sought to challenge Zinke.

Gianforte thanked Zinke for his service in a press release following the announcement. “He’s been an outspoken advocate for Montanans and our values from protecting public lands to restoring accountability in the federal government,” Gianforte said.

U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy called fellow Republican Zinke a mentor. Sheehy, like Zinke, is a former Navy SEAL commander. “Montana owes him a deep debt of gratitude, and he will be deeply missed in the halls of Congress,” Sheehy said in a press release.

Rob Chaney contributed reporting.

The post Western Montana U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke said he won’t seek reelection citing health problems  appeared first on Montana Free Press.

It’s poll week here at Montana Free Press.

We’re publishing results from an MTFP-Eagleton poll we’ve conducted in late December and early January as part of our ongoing Montana Insights project, examining Montana voters’ opinions on everything from a statewide sales tax (not popular) to the geographic of eastern Montana (mixed takes) and the president’s immigration agenda (quite controversial). 

We’ll be rolling out those and other poll results over several days in the form of stories on our website, montanafreepress.org — and rounding up some of the most interesting takeaways with updates to this post between March 2 and March 6, 2026.

Here’s what we’ve got:

Most Montana voters don’t want a statewide sales tax

Nearly half of respondents, 48% indicated that they “strongly” oppose a statewide sales tax even if the revenue is used to reduce property tax bills. That sentiment was firmly bipartisan, with only 34% of Republicans, 38% of Democrats and 32% of independents voicing support for a sales tax.

READ MORE

Montana voters overwhelmingly view cost as a major hurdle in accessing mental health care

Montana voters named cost as a major perceived barrier to mental health care access. Fewer respondents rated physical distance and stigma as a significant hurdle.

READ MORE

‘The mostly flat part’: what our poll respondents say about where Eastern Montana really begins

A question on how to divide Montana’s eastern region from its western one didn’t produce a clear consensus. The top selections for a dividing line were quite literally hundreds of miles apart — Billings and the Continental Divide.

READ MORE

Montanans want more solar, natural gas development, are less interested in new coal plants

Solar and natural gas power make up a small share of the state’s energy mix, but Montanans are bullish on generating more electricity with them. Additional power from coal plants and wind farms proved to be less popular among poll respondents, with roughly one-third saying they would prefer less electricity from these sources.

READ MORE

75% of voters want Montana to have at least as much federal land as it does now

A majority of Montana voters across the political spectrum say they want the scope of federal land ownership to stay the same or expand. With 62% of Republicans polled agreeing, the findings suggest a gap between the Montana Republican Party Platform —  which supports federal land transfer to state ownership — and Republican voters.

READ MORE

The post Poll week: How Montanans feel about sales tax, immigration and state officials appeared first on Montana Free Press.

This piece is part of MTFP’s 2026 poll week, where we’re exploring data on how Montana voters feel about their elected officials, environmental concerns, immigration enforcement and other issues.

Montana is, in many ways, a land of two halves: a western Montana of snow-capped mountains and national forests and an eastern Montana of wide-open plains and flatland agriculture.  

It’s a time-honored divide: peaks versus plains, Missoula versus Miles City, Flathead versus Fort Peck lakes. But where exactly would Montanans place the dividing line?

As it turns out, there’s no clear point of consensus — at least according to an MTFP-Eagleton poll conducted this winter, which asked Montana voters about that crucial geography question alongside weighty issues like the president’s immigration policy and support for a statewide sales tax.

None of the options we presented as eastern Montana’s official starting point — ranging from the Continental Divide to the city of Billings — garnered approval from more than a third of respondents. Billings was the closest, at 31%.

Next up was the Continental Divide, which snakes along mountain ranges from just south of the state’s western “nose,” before passing east of Butte, west of Helena and northward through Glacier National Park. That’s Montana’s portion, of course, of the hemispheric Continental Divide, which extends from the Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska to the Strait of Magellan in Chile. 

Nearly a fifth of Montanans, 18%, named the Divide the best dividing line on our list. That would place the state capital of Helena, in eastern Montana alongside Dillon and Havre.

Other respondents split among points between the Divide and Billings: Bozeman, Great Falls, Livingston and Lewistown. None of those options garnered more than 12% support.

A few others cheekily declined to pick one of the options on our list, offering their own descriptions instead. 

One respondent said eastern Montana is “the mostly flat part.” A few others cited the Rocky Mountain Front, where the mountains meet plains — most prominently to the west of Great Falls.

Others named extremes: The North Dakota state line in one case (i.e., Montana’s eastern border). Lincoln County in another. 

For the record: Lincoln County, where Libby is the county seat, is nestled up against Idaho in Montana’s Northwest corner — a definition that would put Kalispell and Missoula in eastern Montana.

Think you can do better with an Eastern Montana definition? We’d love to hear how you’d draw the line and why. Assuming we get enough insightful — or at least creative — responses, we’ll mention the best ones in Friday’s edition of our Lowdown newsletter. Email your submissions to news@montanafreepress.org.

The post Where does eastern Montana start? Montanans disagree appeared first on Montana Free Press.

This piece is part of MTFP’s 2026 poll week, where we’re exploring data on how Montana voters feel about their elected officials, environmental concerns, immigration enforcement and other issues.

Montana voters’ generations-long aversion to a state sales tax is alive and well, according to a poll conducted by Montana Free Press and the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

Despite support in recent years from business groups that argue the state’s tax structure should adapt to an increasingly tourism-focused economy, a majority of voters polled in late December and early January said they would prefer to keep the state one of the few in nation without a sales tax — even if the revenues are used to reduce property tax bills.

In the poll, 48% of respondents indicated that they “strongly” oppose a statewide sales tax “if the revenue was used to reduce property tax bills,” with another 12% saying they are “somewhat” opposed. In contrast, only 33% indicated strong or lukewarm support, putting the idea underwater by 27 percentage points.

That opposition held up across party lines. Only 34% of Republicans, 38% of Democrats and 32% of independents voiced support for a sales tax.

Montana is currently one of five states without a sales tax. Instead, the state’s current tax system relies heavily on income and property taxes, which are the primary revenue streams for state and local government, respectively. Historically, property tax revenues were anchored by payments from large industrial properties such as mines and timber mills, many of which have closed or scaled back their operations over the past several decades. That means the cost of paying for local services such as schools and law enforcement has to fall elsewhere.

In a series of presentations last summer, Montana Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Todd O’Hair contended that the long-term decline of property-intensive mining and timber industries has undermined the foundation of that tax system. O’Hair, who represents the state’s largest business lobbying group, said he believes it’s time for Montana to consider other options for the revenues necessary to fund public services without placing undue burden on homeowners and businesses.

Meanwhile, opponents of a sales tax argue that shifting to a general sales tax model would result in a heavier tax bill for lower- and moderate-income families. 

Montana voters have historically voted down sales tax measures by large margins, defeating referendums in 1971 and 1993 — with the latter failing by 49 percentage points. Voters also passed a constitutional amendment in 1994 that caps any future state sales tax at 4% unless that state constitution is amended again.

As such, while some Montana resort communities levy sales taxes as local-option taxes, the state remains one of five in the country without a statewide sales tax.

The MTFP-Eagleton poll surveyed 801 registered voters through telephone interviews and text-to-web questionnaires. Data was collected from Dec. 23, 2025 to Jan. 3, 2026. The poll, which was weighted to reflect the state’s electorate, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. 

This piece is part of the Montana Insights project, which commissioned a poll to help MTFP readers understand public sentiment on key Montana policy issues.

The post Most Montana voters don’t want a statewide sales tax appeared first on Montana Free Press.

This piece is part of MTFP’s 2026 poll week, where we’re exploring data on how Montana voters feel about their elected officials, environmental concerns, immigration enforcement and other issues.

A majority of Montana voters said they see cost and insurance as significant barriers to accessing mental health care — a larger share than those who named physical distance as a major hurdle.

According to a new Montana Free Press-Eagleton Poll, conducted in late 2025 and early 2026, 67% of respondents cited “cost of services” as a major problem when it comes to accessing care. A smaller share, 42%, cited the stigma associated with receiving care as a major problem, while 47% said the same about the travel distance necessary to access services.

Mental health and addiction crises are not uncommon in Montana, with experts describing their causes as complex, entangled and difficult to solve. The state had the second-highest suicide rate in the country in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Additionally, residents who live in rural areas must often travel hours to reach health care services, and some behavioral health services aren’t available within Montana’s borders at all. Given the state’s strong bootstraps mentality, many mental health care advocates also commonly say stigma deters Montanans from speaking up about mental illness.

That perception breaks down differently between genders. According to the poll results, 35% of men said they saw stigma as a major challenge for mental health access, while that percentage was substantially higher, 50%, for women.

Poll respondents overall, though, named cost and insurance as major problems in greater numbers.

In another part of the poll, 43% of respondents said they had health insurance coverage through their employer or their spouse’s employer, while 29% said they were insured through Medicare. Just six percent of respondents said they were covered through Medicaid, the health insurance plan for low-income adults. 

According to a 2021 state-level overview by KFF, a national health policy research firm, Montanans with mental health issues insured through large employer health plans had higher average health spending compared to enrollees without those diagnoses, paying roughly $8,800 annually compared to $3,800. 

Brenda Kneeland, the CEO of the Eastern Montana Community Mental Health Center in Miles City, said she’s not surprised that cost and insurance coverage are perceived as major barriers for Montanans seeking mental health care. She said her organization often helps patients navigate insurance gaps, especially if they’ve been disenrolled from Medicaid coverage because of paperwork or documentation errors. People with employer-based insurance, she added, are also not immune from cost struggles.

“Just because they have health insurance through an employer, that doesn’t always mean that there are strong behavioral health benefits tied to the plan,” Kneeland said.

Matt Kuntz, the director of NAMI Montana, a mental health advocacy coalition, said he thinks stigma has been gradually decreasing around mental health issues over the past decade. Kuntz linked some of that change in sentiment to the fact that many military veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as their friends and family members, have become well-acquainted with the need for accessible mental health care treatment.

“We’ve been having a lot more conversations about mental health in the last decade or two. And I think it’s a more positive conversation,” Kuntz said. 

In recent years, high-profile public officials in Montana have launched projects aimed at destigmatizing mental health and addiction treatment, and advocated for policy fixes to make that type of health care more accessible. 

Since taking office in 2021, Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, has rolled out a series of initiatives aimed at improving access to treatment for mental health issues and substance use disorder. One of those efforts, a roughly $300 million funding scheme dubbed the Behavioral Health System for Future Generations, held a statewide listening tour about filling treatment gaps for mental health and addiction. Another, the Angel Initiative, works with local law enforcement departments to help route people to addiction treatment services. 

At an October meeting between Gianforte and local law enforcement officials, Sweet Grass County Sheriff Alan Ronneberg described mental health as an issue at the root of many people’s struggles, including those with substance use disorder.

“When we’re talking about mental health, not everybody with mental health problems has an addiction problem, but everybody with an addiction problem has a mental health problem,” Ronneberg said. “We need to recognize that.”

The MTFP-Eagleton poll surveyed 801 registered voters through telephone interviews and text-to-web questionnaires. Data was collected from Dec. 23, 2025 to Jan. 3, 2026. The poll, which was weighted to reflect the demographics of the state’s voters, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

This piece is part of the Montana Insights project, which commissioned a poll to help MTFP readers understand public sentiment on key Montana policy issues. 

The post Montana voters overwhelmingly view cost as a major mental health care hurdle appeared first on Montana Free Press.