By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff

CQ Politics Presidential Race Rating: Republican Favored

Electoral Votes: 3

During the past two presidential campaigns, any adviser suggesting that the Democratic nominee put effort and resources into pursuing Montana’s three election votes would have had his or her competence questioned, or worse. A state that long has leaned both conservative and Republican, Montana favored George W. Bush for president by 25 percentage points in 2000 and 20 points four years ago.

In the 10 elections since President Lyndon B. Johnson carried Montana as part of his national landslide, only Bill Clinton in 1992 carried the state for the Democrats — and that with 38 percent of the vote in his three-way race with President George H.W. Bush and independent Ross Perot.

So on history alone, Arizona Sen. John McCain has to be rated the favorite to carry Montana as the Republican presidential nominee. He also brings in personal strengths, as he viewed by many Montana voters as a fellow Westerner, and his military background, which includes his time in captivity as a Vietnam War POW, will appeal to many in the state’s conservative base.

Yet Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , McCain’s Democratic opponent, sent a clear signal that he is not writing off the state — as most recent nominees of his party have — on July 4, which he chose to spend with his family at a parade and picnic in Montana city of Butte. Obama won his final primary victory over New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton with 58 percent of the vote in Montana on June 3. And there are reasons why the appearance of Montana on Obama’s list of states where he is running TV ads and opening campaign offices for the fall campaign cannot be written off as a flight of fancy.

The Democratic Party has for many years had more of a base in Montana than in many of the Mountain West states, in part because of the influence of organized labor in state industries such as mining, railroads and timber. This is evident in the long tenure of Max Baucus , now chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who would be an overwhelming favorite this November to win a sixth term — even if his opponent were not Bob Kelleher, a political gadfly with some strongly liberal views who somehow beat out five other contenders in the June Republican primary.

That primary fluke is symbolic of another reason why a victory for McCain isn’t as locked in as past presidential election outcomes would suggest. The state Republican Party is in some disarray in the wake of significant down-ballot Democratic gains this decade. Democrat Brian Schweitzer took the governor’s office from the GOP in 2004 and is heavily favored to win a second term this November. Baucus gained a Democratic colleague in the Senate when Jon Tester ousted Republican incumbent Conrad Burns in 2006.

One other element of uncertainty is provided by Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia who aims to benefit from the small-government attitudes of many conservatives in the state. Though McCain easily won Montana’s June 3 Republican primary, held four months after he had effectively clinched the nomination, libertarian-minded Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took a fifth of the vote. The key question for the GOP candidate in the state now, said Jim Lopach, chairman of political science at the University of Montana in Missoula, is, “Will Republicans turn out for McCain when a lot of Republicans are libertarian?”

Strong third-party showings are not unknown in Montana. Perot took 26 percent of the vote in 1992, his seventh-best performance among the states and a factor in allowing Clinton to carry the state by 3 points. Four years later Perot’s share dropped to 14 percent, and Republican Bob Dole defeated Clinton by 3 points.