U.S. Montana Rep. Troy Downing at 34% approval in his deep-red district

U.S. Rep. Troy Downing, who won Montana’s Eastern Congressional district by a wide margin in 2024, has a 34% approval and 40% disapproval rating among Eastern Congressional District’s registered voters, according to a Montana Free Press-Eagleton poll conducted in late April and early May.

Meanwhile, about 2 in 3 voters polled in the district reported that they did not know Brian Miller or Sam Lux, two of the three Democrats competing in a 3-way primary race for the chance to unseat Downing. Comparatively, only 13% of voters said they did not know the incumbent.

According to Jeremy Johnson, a political scientist at Carroll College, the Democrats’ low name recognition is not surprising at this point in the election cycle. But Johnson said it’s something the primary winner will have to improve to have any chance of winning the general election.

“That’s the challenge that any candidate has, is to convince the donors that you can run a competitive race in November,” Johnson said.

The poll did not include questions about the third candidate in the Democratic primary, state Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, who had suspended his campaign amid allegations of sexual abuse before Eagleton fielded the survey. Windy Boy restarted his campaign in early May.

In an interview earlier this month, Johnson told Montana Free Press that Montana’s Eastern Congressional District “was essentially drawn as a safe Republican district.”

Downing’s approval rating surprised Johnson, particularly because the Republican won his 2024 election by more than 30 percentage points.

“The numbers are definitely worse than you’d ever expect in a district with the demographics of the second district,” Johnson told MTFP this week.

Johnson said that Downing’s rating relates to dissatisfaction with Republican President Donald Trump, the war in Iran and rising everyday costs.

“What it really suggests is people are not approving of how the Trump administration is handling its job right now,” Johnson said.

The same poll found that Montana, which elected Trump by a 20-point margin in 2024, is divided on Trump and the Iran war.

Lux, a farrier from Great Falls running in the Eastern District’s Democratic primary, told MTFP he was excited to see Downing’s low approval rating.

“This gives me a bit of a confidence boost,” Lux said.

Lux told MTFP that he thought that the approval rating for the war in Iran, which roughly 2 in 5 Montanans support, was low. Lux opposes U.S. military involvement in Iran. So does Miller, an attorney in Helena also running in the Democratic primary.

“We need to get out of the Middle East,” Miller told MTFP.

Neither candidate appeared phased by their lack of name recognition.

“We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing,” Miller said. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, whether it’s me or Sam.”

Montana’s U.S. Senate candidates also aren’t very well known. About 40% of voters did not know the name of independent Seth Bodnar. Democrats and Republicans scored worse.

Keegan Bittner, a spokesperson for Downing, declined to comment on the poll results.

Johnson said that it’s early in the election cycle to hypothesize about how Downing’s low approval rating and Democrats’ low name recognition will eventually shape the race.

“We don’t even have primary election results yet,” Johnson said. “You can not extrapolate what happens in May to what the election results will look like in November,” Johnson said.

The MTFP–Eagleton poll surveyed registered voters in Montana who were invited by text message to complete an online survey. Data was collected from April 29 to May 7.

Participants were recruited using a probability-based method, meaning they were randomly drawn from the state’s registered voter file so every voter had a known chance of being invited. The results were weighted during analysis to reflect the demographics of Montana’s registered voters. The survey’s overall margin of error is +/- 4.3%. The margin of error for Eastern District voters is +/- 5.9%.