It’s true all elections have consequences. But sometimes, a single vote can make a bigger splash than usual. That may be the case during Montana’s June 2 primary election. Montana Free Press reporter Zeke Lloyd sat down with MTPR’s Austin Amestoy to explain.
Austin Amestoy So you've spent some time reporting on a number of reasons why this primary in Montana may be particularly consequential. Can you give our listeners a broad overview of what you've been thinking about?
Zeke Lloyd Yeah, sure. Firstly, there's kind of a weird mathematical phenomenon that comes out of primary elections as a result of the fact that people just don't vote as much in primaries, so votes actually kind of count for more. Then the other thing is that in a state like Montana, it's a very Republican state, it means a lot of big elections are kind of decided in the primary because by the time the general comes around, there are a lot places where a Democrat just has a very low chance of winning. For both of those reasons, primaries actually have a lot of significance statewide.
Austin Amestoy Let's break both of those down then, Zeke. That sounds great. And I wanna start with the numbers game you just brought up here. This is a midterm election. There's no presidential candidates on the ballot, and it's a primary, not the general. So what does that usually do for turnout in Montana?
Zeke Lloyd Right, so my sister's the engineer, I'm a journalist, so there are a lot of moving, kind of, mathematical pieces here. I'll try to break them down very simply. So the primary versus the general. This is just a trend we see throughout all of Montana's kind of recent voting history. General elections just draw about twice as many voters as primaries. So that's first and foremost. There are fewer voters in a primary, which means a single ballot goes farther. But then as you mentioned, it's also a midterm year. So that means there's no presidential election in November. And that's another reason, this is nationwide, people just don't vote as much in midterm elections. So we also see lower voter turnout as a result of that.
The way I like to think about this is 2024, we saw a presidential election November, we had over a half a million Montanans vote. And that was to allocate Montana's four electoral votes out of the country's 535. Now, if you look at Montana's primary that's happening right now, we're seeing just a few hundred or a few thousand ballots competing with yours and a decision over who's going to represent your specific local district in the state Legislature.
Austin Amestoy Now Zeke, important to note here, no one's getting elected to office tomorrow, right? We still have the general election to go, so why might some of these primary races matter tomorrow?
Zeke Lloyd That's absolutely true. No one is going to take office as a result of the election, the primary election. But in a Republican state, we have a lot of places where the Republican primary is probably going to be a lot more competitive than the actual general election in November. So you look at two PSC votes, that's the Public Service Commission. They decide how much you pay and kind of regulate the utilities you have as a utility consumer for much of Montana. And the two races going on are both competitive Republican primaries, and a Democrat hasn't been on the PSC since, I believe it's been over a decade, more than a decade since we've had a Democrat on the PSC. So those Republican primaries are going to be quite decisive, essentially almost locking in which candidate is actually going to take office in November. And Jon Bennion talks about this in his 2026 edition of Big Sky Politics for a lot of eastern Montana as well. Eastern Montana outside of reservation communities is very conservative. And so a lot of those primaries for the state Legislature are ultimately going to be probably the deciding vote for who takes office because when November rolls around, Democrats just aren't gonna be that competitive.
Austin Amestoy Zeke, finally, you wrote about voters picking a partisan flavor in this election. What do you mean by that? I am guessing this is different from choosing a scoop at the ice cream shop.
Zeke Lloyd You know, it's maybe not as different as we'd like to think. You know let's say you want chocolate in your ice cream. There's still gonna be a pretty big difference between mint chocolate chip and peanut butter chocolate. It's really an opportunity for voters to figure out what kind of, in a lot of cases, Republican they want to see in office. The western Congressional District comes to mind. We have three candidates there and they're really offering voters in western Montana very different kinds of Republicanism. And that gives voters really two choices. One, what kind of Republican would I like to see in office? And two, because it's a primary, voters might also be considering, well, there's a very competitive Democratic field, so which of these candidates is most likely to win the general election? And that might influence how people vote as well.
Austin Amestoy Zeke Lloyd is a reporter with Montana Free Press. Zeke, thank you for being here.
Zeke Lloyd Thanks for having me.
