Montana Insights Archives - Montana Free Press

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

Amanda Eggert — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:34:54 +0000

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.

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

Amanda Eggert — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:00:00 +0000

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.”

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Poll week: How Montanans feel about sales tax, immigration and state officials

MTFP Staff — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:27:32 +0000

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.

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.

‘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.

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.

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.

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Where does eastern Montana start? Montanans disagree

Eric Dietrich — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 15:56:23 +0000

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.

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Most Montana voters don’t want a statewide sales tax

Eric Dietrich — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 15:00:00 +0000

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.

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.

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

Mara Silvers — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 15:00:00 +0000

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.

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Poll: 3 in 4 Montanans concerned about being able to afford housing over the next five years

Zeke Lloyd — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:16:04 +0000

Almost 3 in 4 Montanans were concerned about being able to afford housing in the state over the next five years, according to a Montana Free Press-Eagleton Poll.

According to the poll, 2 in 5 Montana households spent more than 30% of their income on rent or mortgage. That means roughly 40% of poll respondents self-identify as cost-burdened, a term defined by the U.S. Census Bureau to describe those whose housing costs exceed that threshold.

Adults under 35 were more likely than those over 50 to feel concerned about being able to afford housing in Montana during the next five years. Roughly 1 in 3 respondents over 65 were “not at all concerned” about the cost of housing in Montana during the next five years. In contrast, 9% of those between 35 and 49 years old were equally unconcerned. That figure dropped to 2% for Montanans under 35.

Montanans put responsibility for housing affordability on different entities, according to the poll. About two-thirds of Republican respondents, and 90% of Democrats, believe both state and local governments bear at least “some responsibility” for ensuring that families have safe and decent housing they can afford. Overall, Montanans identified nonprofits as the least accountable.

Though Montana’s population growth slowed in 2023 and 2024, the state continues to direct efforts toward housing a population that’s increased by 26% since 2000.

Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte assembled a housing task force in the summer of 2022. Six months later, the group offered suggestions that influenced legislation in the 2023 Legislature. In the summer of 2024, the group endorsed almost two dozen policy recommendations headlined by a proposal to make parking spaces an optional component of new multifamily housing lots. The list also included changes to zoning laws, other parking regulations and building code requirements.

This legislative session, House Speaker Pro Tempore Katie Zolnikov, R-Billings, has proposed House Bill 492, which if passed would reduce new developments’ mandated parking requirements. Sen. Jeremy Trebas, R-Great Falls, meanwhile, has put forward Senate Bill 266, which also overlaps with recommendations from Gianforte’s task force and would allow triplexes and fourplexes in areas zoned for single-family homes. It would also preemptively block local governments from trying to skirt its statutes permitting multifamily housing in dense areas.

According to the MTFP-Eagleton Poll, more than half of Montanans were “very dissatisfied” with the state’s handling of cost of living and affordability. Another 1 in 4 were “somewhat dissatisfied.” Similarly, results indicate nearly 50% of residents were also “very dissatisfied” with the state government’s handling of property taxes and more than 1 in 4 were “somewhat dissatisfied.”

In January 2024 Gianforte set up a property tax task force separate from the group aimed at tackling Montana’s struggles with affordable housing. The group recommended a slew of proposals that summer, though the governor has only specifically endorsed a homestead exemption developed by the task force.

Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, has brought House Bill 231, which would enact a homestead exemption by shifting the tax burden away from primary homes and instead onto second homes and short-term rentals like Airbnb-style units. Democrats have put forward similar policy in House Bill 155, though instead of focusing on drawing a distinction by primary and secondary residence, the legislation would shift the onus to higher-value properties relative to lower-value properties. Senate Bill 90, brought by Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, would utilize the state’s bed tax to create property tax relief.

Each piece of legislation has passed its chamber of origin.

The MTFP-Eagleton Poll surveyed more than 900 randomly selected respondents through telephone interviews and text-to-web questionnaires. Data collected in late January and early February has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.1% after being weighted to reflect the state’s demographics.

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Montana Free Press publishes first of three public opinion polls

John S. Adams and Zeke Lloyd — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 02:20:47 +0000

So much of the work we do at Montana Free Press relies on good data. But for too long now, Montanans have lacked a reliable, Montana-based measure of public opinion on the issues shaping our state. National polls often fail to capture Montanans’ nuanced perspectives, and election-season horse race surveys tend to prioritize forecasting political outcomes over deeper questions about public concerns.

To address this gap in understanding public attitudes, MTFP, in partnership with the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, launched a statewide public opinion poll. We’re calling it Montana Insights, and we anticipate it will be the first of three public interest surveys we conduct throughout the year.

“Conducting and publicly releasing a poll of this depth is very rare,” said Jessi Bennion, an assistant teaching professor of political science at Montana State University who serves as one of Montana Insights’ advisers. “Having robust and highly vetted evidence of policy attitudes gives us a picture of our politics that we have not yet seen before.”

Bennion is among five advisory board members from a range of disciplines who contributed time and expertise to this effort:

Lee Banville, director of the University of Montana School of Journalism, provided insight on poll design, media ethics and political reporting.
Desi Small-Rodriguez, an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who originally hails from Lame Deer, contributed expertise in social science research and survey structure.
Rob Saldin, director of UM’s Mansfield Ethics and Public Affairs Program, advised on analyzing poll results and incorporating them into accurate and contextualized reporting.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, aided in interpreting voter data and advising on strategies to communicate findings effectively.

The project is designed to provide Montanans and our leaders with data-driven insights into the priorities, concerns and perspectives of people across the state.

WHY WE CONDUCTED THIS POLL

Public opinion polling is a valuable tool for understanding what matters most to the public. Done well, polls provide insights beyond anecdotes or debates playing out online or on social media. In recent years, large-scale polling focused on Montana has been relatively scarce. Our goal is to reestablish a reliable, nonpartisan baseline for tracking public sentiment in the state.

By measuring attitudes on a range of issues — including the economy, health care, education, and governance — the poll will serve as a public resource for citizens, policymakers, journalists and community leaders who seek to better understand the greatest needs and concerns of Montanans today.

HOW THE POLL WAS CONDUCTED

We worked with the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, one of the nation’s most respected nonpartisan polling institutions, to ensure a broad and accurate representation of Montana’s population.

Survey period: Jan. 24 to Feb. 14, 2025
Sample size: 919 Montana adults, age 18 and up
Survey methods: A statewide RDD (random digit dial) sample contacted through a combination of live telephone interviews and text-to-web surveys to reach a diverse cross-section of respondents to ensure representativeness of all Montanans
Demographic weighting: Data was adjusted to ensure it reflects Montana’s population in terms of sex, age, education, race/ethnicity, region, registered voter status, number of adults in the household and party identification
Margin of error: ±4.1 percentage points, which is the expected probable difference between interviewing everyone in a population versus a scientific sampling drawn from that population

Unlike election-focused polling, this survey was not limited to registered or likely voters. Instead, it aims to capture a comprehensive picture of all Montanans, including those who may not regularly participate in elections but still have opinions on the issues affecting their lives.

“General population surveys are used in public opinion polling when we want to investigate issues, attitudes, and behaviors that pertain to the entire population under study. A general population survey takes a sample of adults from a known population, and results from this sample can be generalized back to the population as a whole,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling.

Koning said that while pollsters and the media often talk about registered or likely voters in pre-election polling, taking a sample of all adults within a population provides critical insights into how politics and policy shape and affect people’s everyday lives.

WHAT MAKES THIS POLL USEFUL

This poll is one of the most in-depth and methodologically rigorous public opinion surveys conducted in Montana in recent years.

Independent and nonpartisan: As a nonprofit news organization, MTFP is committed to objectivity and transparency. This survey was designed with rigorous scientific standards and free from partisan influence.
Montana-focused: Unlike national polls that may not reflect the state’s unique concerns, this survey is tailored to Montana’s people, economy and policy landscape.
A tool for better decision-making: Whether you’re an elected official, a journalist, a nonprofit leader or an engaged citizen, this data can help inform policy discussions, improve news coverage and ensure that decision-making aligns with public priorities.

HOW TO INTERPRET AND USE THESE FINDINGS

Public opinion is not static, and this poll serves as a baseline for future research — a starting point to track changes in Montanans’ attitudes over time. While no single poll can capture the full complexity of public sentiment or attitudes, this survey offers a well-researched, statistically sound snapshot of how Montanans feel about major issues today.

We encourage thoughtful, data-driven discussions based on these findings. Policymakers and community leaders can use this information to better respond to public needs, and citizens can use it to hold leaders accountable and ensure their voices are heard in the policy-making process.

A COMMITMENT TO PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING

MTFP’s mission is to provide Montanans with the information they need to make informed decisions about their communities and their future. This poll is another step toward fulfilling that mission.

We will continue to track and analyze public opinion in Montana, ensuring that the perspectives of Montanans remain front and center in discussions about the state’s future.

For full methodology details and key findings, visit our dedicated webpage.

We welcome your thoughts and feedback. Let us know what issues matter most to you, and how we can continue to bring you the most relevant and accurate public-interest journalism possible.

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