SEAN TRENDE: Sizing Up the Montana Senate Race.

Montana fits into this category of “strange” states. At the presidential level, it is blood red. Voters backed Trump by 20 points in 2016, and Mitt Romney by 14 points in 2012. Yet beneath the presidential level, the politics of the state are significantly murkier. Montana has sent only a handful of Republicans to the Senate since popular elections were adopted. It routinely elects Democratic governors.

Even at the presidential level, the state can be unpredictable. John McCain only won there by two points in 2008. Silver Bow County, in the mountainous west, has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1956, while Deer Lodge, just to its northwest, last voted Republican in 1924 (it favored Calvin Coolidge over Progressive candidate Robert LaFollette by 19 votes that year).

From there, things just get weirder.