Republican Kurt Alme has won Montana’s open U.S. Senate seat, the Associated Press called early Wednesday, capping a three-way race that split the state’s non-Republican vote and sent a former U.S. attorney and Gianforte budget director to Washington.
With 78 percent of the statewide vote counted when the race was called, Alme held 47.7 percent. Independent Seth Bodnar trailed at 38.6 percent. Democrat Alani Bankhead finished just under 12 percent. Libertarian Kyle Austin ran a distant fourth.
Alme declared victory in Billings before the AP call. Bodnar conceded shortly before midnight.
“Montana is my home, and as your senator, I will fight to make life more affordable, make our communities safer and always protect our Montana way of life,” Alme said in a statement released around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Bodnar cast the loss as proof an independent can still run a competitive statewide campaign. “We didn’t get over the hill tonight, and that stings. But what we built together will endure,” he said.
How the seat opened
Alme was tapped after Sen. Steve Daines withdrew his reelection bid in March. Alme previously served as state budget director under Gov. Greg Gianforte and was twice appointed U.S. attorney for Montana by President Donald Trump.
Polls and political observers had predicted for months that Bodnar and Bankhead would divide moderate and left-leaning voters. Each camp’s supporters pressed the other candidate to drop out. Neither did. The final tally tracked that split through election night.
The Senate result landed alongside other federal and statewide calls. Democrat Sam Forstag won the Western U.S. House District over Republican Aaron Flint by about 9,300 votes, becoming Montana’s first Democrat elected to federal office since Sen. Jon Tester’s 2018 reelection. Incumbent Republican Troy Downing held the Eastern House seat. Amy Eddy defeated Dan Wilson for a nonpartisan Montana Supreme Court seat. Both Republican candidates for open Public Service Commission districts, Annie Bukacek and Jeff Pattison, won.
What voters also passed
Three ballot measures cleared on Tuesday. Constitutional Initiative 132 keeps judicial elections nonpartisan. Constitutional Initiative 133 sets faster legal review and signature-gathering timelines for initiatives. Initiative 194, billed as The Montana Plan, bars incorporated entities — nonprofits, unions and for-profit companies alike — from spending money to influence state elections starting Jan. 1, 2027.
Alme will succeed Daines when the new Congress convenes. How much of the state’s midterm map shifts under a split federal delegation, and how I-194 reshapes campaign finance next year, will play out in Helena and on the trail long before the next Senate race.
County canvassing boards still have until late November to certify final totals, and provisional ballots can nudge precinct-level margins. None of the outstanding paper is expected to change the Senate call. What it can change is how close Alme’s share sits to 50 percent once every ballot is in — a figure both parties will cite when they argue whether the three-way race was a fluke or a new pattern.
Alme’s move to Washington also reshapes Montana’s lobbying map. Daines spent years as a reliable vote on public lands and energy permitting; Alme has signaled affordability and public safety as opening themes. How that translates on appropriations subcommittees will matter more to Montana hospitals, tribes and counties than the victory speech in Billings.
County election offices will canvass through November. Alme’s team is already staffing a transition that has to cover two U.S. attorney tours, a state budget office and a campaign built in under a year. Bodnar’s network of independent donors and volunteers is the other story from Tuesday night — a second-place finish that still moved tens of thousands of Montanans who wanted a lane outside the two major parties.
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