By: Democratic Senate challenger Jon Tester appears to hold a slight lead over Republican Sen. Conrad Burns in a new poll of likely voters released Monday. The poll drew an unusually sharp reaction from the Burns campaign.
A Burns spokesman dismissed the USA Today/Gallup poll as inaccurate and initially said the campaign was revoking one newspaper's credentials to attend Burns' election night event in Billings because it wrote about the poll.
Jason Klindt first said Monday that the Great Falls Tribune would not be allowed to attend, before changing his mind later in the day.
"Running a bogus poll on the day before an election to try and suppress Republican voter turnout is irresponsible and in poor taste," Klindt told The Associated Press on Monday.
The campaign decided to allow the paper's reporters to attend "so as not to punish the readers," Klindt said.
The USA Today/Gallup telephone survey of 734 likely Montana voters was conducted Nov. 1 through Nov. 3 and showed Tester with 50 percent, compared with Burns' 41 percent. The margin of error was 5 percentage points.
Other recent polls have suggested the race is much closer.
A poll by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, conducted last week for Lee Newspapers of Montana, showed both Tester and Burns at 47 percent among likely voters. That survey had an error margin of 4 percentage points.
Matt McKenna, a spokesman for Tester, called the USA Today/Gallup results significant.
"Fifty percent plus one person's vote means you get to be senator," he told the Great Falls Tribune in a story published Monday.
Klindt told the Tribune the numbers "just don't smell right," considering other recent polls.
"This election is going to be decided by turnout, and Republicans are better at it than Democrats," he said.
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