The 2026 general election is just about a year away. The races for Montana’s U.S. Senate and House seats are taking shape. Three Montana Democrats join the race to challenge Sen. Daines. The U.S. House races feature veterans,

The split-ticket voters were decisive for Bullock, who won just 50.3% of the vote, enough to defeat Republican challenger Greg Gianforte by 16,000 votes. Gianforte won the governorship four years later in a race against Bullock’s lieutenant governor.

Split-ticket voting nationally peaked in the 1970s with about 30% of the electorate choosing candidates of different parties for president and Congress, Wilson said. But the number of split-ticket voters drops to 7.1% for Senate races by 2020 and 4% for U.S. House, according to Wilson.

Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, the state’s top election official, says her office will use a federal database to step up efforts to check registered voters for U.S. citizenship.

The Transparent Election Initiative argues that these privileges can also be limited and taken away. It would seek to strip the power of corporations to spend money in elections through the Montana state charter, removing a right that those corporations never officially had before Citizens United.