New Big Sky Poll – Montanans Favor Casting their Votes by Mail

The latest Big Sky Poll was released on Monday and the majority of the 519 registered voters throughout the state that were polled said they would prefer casting their votes by mail.

Sara Rinfret, Professor of Public Administration at the University of Montana, and co-chair of the Big Sky Poll capsulated the results of the poll.

“Some of the things that we found were that 66 percent would prefer to cast their ballot by mail this fall,” she began. “54 percent believe that Montana’s COVID 19 policies are about right.”

Rinfret said respondents expressed their opinions about other subjects, as well.

“We asked them about voting in elections more broadly in terms of the level of trust,” she said. “30 percent of the 517 say they have a lot of trust that elections are fair and 53 percent strongly believe that their vote matters. When voting by mail, whether or not ballots should be counted if they are received by the elections office before the polls close, 47 percent agreed with that statement. 44 percent believe that if the ballot is postmarked by Election Day it should be counted, so there are some interesting dynamics there.”

For those who are in charge of elections, Rinfret said the poll provides some guidance for them, as well.

“One thing that’s good for decision makers is that about 51 percent of folks would like to have a general election voter guide provided by the state of Montana for each election,” she said.

In the latest poll released a week ago, voters had initially favored Donald Trump for President, Steve Bullock for the U.S. Senate, Matt Rosendale for the House and Greg Gianforte for Governor, although some of those margins were narrow, and many voters had not yet made up their minds.