Hope Dewell Gentry presents the results of the 2025 Mountain States Poll at Montana State University-Billings on Oct. 28, 2025 in Billings (Photo by Darrell Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan).
Just because Montana is a red state, doesn’t mean residents are satisfied with Republican leadership according to a new annual poll released Tuesday.
Montana State University-Billings, which has conducted the annual Mountain States Poll on residents since 1989, released this year’s results which show few of Montana’s most familiar political faces with a majority of support, while a feeling of polarization persists, despite having common ground across party lines on some politically charged issues.
“It’s a little abnormal to see results this low, this early into a term,” said Hope Dewell Gentry, director of the Mountain States Poll and a political scientist who teaches at the university.
The poll surveyed 854 Montanans prior to the federal government shutdown with 55% saying they voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 Election. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.4%.
However, when it came time to rate the state and federal leaders, all of whom are Republican, the GOP faltered.
President Trump’s approval rating was deadlocked with his disapproval rating at 41%, with the remaining group remaining neutral. Meanwhile, 56% of the respondents said they disapproved of the job Congress is doing.
“Those are not quite as high as you might have expected,” Gentry said.
Those trend lines didn’t get much better for Montana-based politicians.
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte showed the strongest results, albeit with 37% approving of his job. Republican Congressman Ryan Zinke, who also served as Trump’s Secretary of the Interior during the first term, had an approval rating of 26%
“Even Gianforte is not particularly popular,” Gentry said.
First-term Congressman Troy Downing’s approval rating hovered only at 16%, with the rest of the respondents having an opinion of neutral or disapproval, or said they didn’t know.
“With Downing, people are unsure — and really unsure,” Gentry said. “He doesn’t have the same media presence as others. It’s probably a message to his staff that a little PR (public relations) on the issues is needed in the district.”
Montana’s senior Sen. Steve Daines, who will run for re-election in 2026, showed only a 31% approval rating, while 28% said they disapproved. Those who identified as Republican gave Daines a higher than 50% approval rating at 53%. Gentry said that as a political scientist, Daines’ numbers suggest that he’s doing an adequate job of connecting to people in his own party, but that those who aren’t Republican aren’t certain about him.
Montana’s newly elected Sen. Tim Sheehy fared even worse, with 34% approving his job and 34% disapproving of his job so far.
“That’s not as high as I was expecting,” Gentry said. “That suggests that people don’t know what he’s doing.”
Montana’s political scene is dominated by Republicans, and more than 58% of the electorate voted for Trump in 2024. In addition, the four members of the state’s Congressional delegation are Republican as are the five “constitutional” or top elected state leaders. Both chambers of the state legislature are controlled by the GOP.
Gentry said that it was both surprising and telling that even though many Montanans identify with Republican or conservative politics, there’s a significant disparity about how residents feel about the politicians from that party, which represents a disconnect.
“There is a lot of dissatisfaction overall and how early this is,” Gentry said. “To already feel this dissatisfied with the people in power this early.”
She said that the numbers could be even more troubling for the incumbent Republicans. Gentry said many people who were Republican seemed more willing to be neutral or say they didn’t know about the GOP performance.
“They’re upset,” Gentry said. “Maybe they don’t like the way things are going, but they’re unwilling to go to the other side and say they disapprove.”
For all the dissatisfaction Montanans seem to be feeling about their elected officials, they’re also more unified on some social issues than the turmoil may suggest.
For example, when it comes to gun control or reproductive rights, Montanans have a lot more in common than different.
When it comes to reproductive rights, especially after the passage of a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion in the state’s constitution, most Montanans told pollsters that their position hadn’t really changed on the issue of abortion, with 88% of respondents saying that abortion should be completely legal or available in certain circumstances. And, people who indicated they’d changed positions or modified their beliefs during the recent debates on reproductive rights said they tended to lean more toward a “pro-choice” position.
When it comes to gun control and the Second Amendment, Montana continues to express strong support for the right to bear arms. In fact, only 2% of respondents said they believed the Second Amendment should be abolished from the U.S. Constitution. However, 20% did say they believed it should be amended to include items like stricter regulations, weapon limitations or restrictions from owning certain firearms. Forty-one percent of respondents said they agreed with the Trump administration when it came to gun control while the remainder were either neutral or disapproved.
