Montana Senate 2026Safe
Kurt Alme (R) vs. Seth Bodnar (I)
Precision Combined forecast
95%
Kurt Alme (R) to win Montana's Senate seat
- Kurt Alme (R)
- 94.7% · −1787
- Seth Bodnar (I)
- 4.8% · +1983
- Alani Bankhead (D)
- 0.5% · +19900
- Sources used
- 4 of 5
- Market money behind it
- $427k
As of Oct 13, 6:02 AM ET · refreshes about every 30 minutes
Kalshi
34% weight- Kurt Alme93¢ ▼0.9
- Seth Bodnar6¢ ▲1.3
- Alani Bankhead1¢ ▲0.4
$263k traded, 1¢ spread
Polymarket
31% weight- Kurt Alme91.5%
- Independent6% ▲0.1
- Alani Bankhead0.6%
$164k traded, 1¢ spread
PredictIt
10% weight- Republican92¢
- Independent8¢
- Democratic1¢
PredictIt publishes no volume, 3¢ spread
Public polls
25% weightR +19.5
Kurt Alme 44.5% · Seth Bodnar 25%
2 pollsters · latest ended Sep 24, 2026
2 pollsters, latest ended Sep 24
Precision member poll
not usedNot fielded yet. Joins this number when the Precision member panel launches.
RealClearPolitics
for comparisonRCP doesn’t license its polling averages, so we link to them instead of copying the number.
Compare on RealClearPolling ↗How the Precision Funnel™ weighed this race
Market money behind the number: $427k
- 34%Kalshi$263k traded, 1¢ spread
- 31%Polymarket$164k traded, 1¢ spread
- 25%Public polls2 pollsters, latest ended Sep 24
- 10%PredictItPredictIt publishes no volume, 3¢ spread
- —Precision member pollNot fielded yet. Joins this number when the Precision member panel launches.
- —Attention: news volume, news tone, Wikipedia pageviewsClosed: not enough news coverage or pageviews to measure yet. 0% unless the gate opens; 5% to 15% when it does. Signals ↓
Weight = trust × evidence for this race, scaled to 100% across the sources used. The rule ↓
Attention and momentum
Gate closedNo clear movement in news coverage or public interest between Kurt Alme and Seth Bodnar. It is shown here and not blended into the number. Gate closed: not enough news coverage or pageviews to measure yet.
News volume36% of bucket
—
Not enough days of data yet
News tone29% of bucket
—
Not enough days of coverage to score tone
Wikipedia pageviews36% of bucket
—
Not enough days of data yet
No news articles a day stored yet.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: GDELT.
No average news tone stored yet.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: GDELT.
No wikipedia pageviews a day stored yet.
Last 28 days; shaded = last 7. Source: Wikipedia.
● Kurt AlmeGDELT series● Seth BodnarGDELT series
Not measured yet: search interest (15%) and social volume and sentiment (15%). Their share is spread over the measured signals until they are wired. News tone is the tone of coverage, not of voters. The gate rule →
Recent public polls
American Pulse Research & Polling
Alme 45 · Bankhead 19 · Bodnar 26
Sep 19 – Sep 24, 2026 · 604 LV
Alme 44 · Bankhead 23 · Bodnar 24
Sep 14 – Sep 15, 2026 · 625 LV
Alme 45 · Bankhead 15 · Bodnar 30
Aug 1 – Aug 4, 2026 · 800 LV
Alme 51 · Bodnar 49
Jul 23 – Jul 27, 2026 · 517 LV
Alme 59 · Bankhead 41
Jul 23 – Jul 27, 2026 · 517 LV
Alme 50 · Bodnar 45 · Austin 5
Jul 23 – Jul 27, 2026 · 517 LV
Alme 49 · Bankhead 22 · Bodnar 27
Jul 23 – Jul 27, 2026 · 517 LV
Alme 49 · Bankhead 24 · Bodnar 25
Jul 23 – Jul 27, 2026 · 517 LV
Alme 56 · Bankhead 36 · Austin 8
Jul 23 – Jul 27, 2026 · 517 LV
Alme 41 · Bankhead 22 · Bodnar 27
Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 · 500 LV
Alme 52 · Bankhead 44
Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 · 500 LV
Alme 40 · Bodnar 44 · Austin 11
Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 · 500 LV
Alme 44 · Bodnar 50
Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 · 500 LV
Alme 44 · Bankhead 40 · Austin 13
Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 · 500 LV
Alme 36 · Bankhead 22 · Bodnar 24
Jul 13 – Jul 16, 2026 · 793 LV
How the Precision Funnel™ builds the Precision Combined number
Everything available on a race goes into the top of the funnel. No source has a fixed percentage: each one’s weight comes from how much evidence it carries for this race, by the published rule on the right.
- Public polls. Every public poll of the race, national, state or local, is vetted before it counts: how many people it reached, how recent it is, whether it screened for likely voters, and whether a party or campaign paid for it. Campaign internal polls are left out.
- Prediction markets, priced by money at risk. For each market we add up the dollars traded (contracts times price). A market with under $10k traded, a spread wider than 10¢, or a 15-point jump on under $25k is left out, because one buyer can set that price.
- Local and regional sources. Newspaper, radio and university polls get the same vetting as step 1. Today they arrive through the public poll feed; we are adding the local sources national feeds miss. In races national pollsters skip, such as state cabinet offices, they may be most of what exists.
- Attention and momentum. News volume and tone (GDELT) and Wikipedia pageviews for the two leading candidates, this week against the three weeks before. Attention is not votes, so it counts only through a gate: two independent sources with enough volume, all moving the same way. Then it carries 5% to 15% of the number; otherwise 0%, shown beside the number. Search interest and social platforms join as they are wired.
- our own member poll. Our panel, weighted to the voter file on party, age, sex, education, income and region. It starts with the same trust as outside polls and earns more only through a scored track record.Not live yet
- The number. Market prices are scaled to add to 100%, a poll lead becomes a win chance with a bell curve 6 points wide, and the sources are averaged with their weights. Every race page prints the weights it got and why.
Full methodology →Why blend? Read the research →How we’ll be scored →
The weighting rule
Weight = trust × evidence, then scaled so the sources used add to 100%.
| Source | Trust | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Kalshi, Polymarket | 1 | Dollars traded ÷ (dollars traded + $50k). $50k counts half, $1M about 95%. |
| PredictIt | ½ | Fixed at ½, since PredictIt publishes no volume and caps each contract at $850. |
| Public polls | 1 | Grows with each vetted poll: full credit at 600 respondents, half credit every 21 days of age, less for registered voters or all adults, half for a partisan sponsor. |
| Precision member poll | 1 | Effective sample ÷ 800 (max 1) × share of demographic groups that match the voter file. Left out under 200 respondents. |
So a Senate race with deep markets and many polls lands near an even split, while a race no market lists and only one local paper polled leans almost entirely on the polls that exist. The constants above are the same for every race; changing one is a new method version, dated and logged. Trust values will be refit on our own scored history and the change published. RealClearPolitics is linked for comparison but not used: RCP has no public data feed and its terms don’t allow republishing its averages. Market prices reflect traders’ money, not a poll of voters. PredictIt data is shown under its non-commercial license. The Funnel never uses a number we did not measure or a source we cannot name.