us, garrett hate and steve kornaki. let me start in montana. republicans pulling out another special election win despite all the controversy. what s been the reaction on the ground there? what are folks in montana saying about all of this? well, i can tell you last night the reaction in the room was surprise that gianforte was going to apologize. he got booed a little bit as he started to mention the incident. there s been no surprise here at the victory. gianforte led the polls because he and republican allies have nuked the democrat here, rob kwis with negative campaign ads. turning him from a relatively unknown but liked folk musician into a an untrustworthy guy. most of the folks expect third down win. the only real question was going to be the margin.
college university, university of montana, they needed to be near 70%. got about 63%. strong, not strong enough. billings, biggest county and city in the state. they lost this by 19 points. improvement for democrats, but not enough. steve, we keep hearing about this wave election that s coming in 2018. any sign of that? there s absolutely a sign that there s been movement in the democrat s direction. here s the evidence we have from special elections so far. you started in kansas a couple weeks ago. this is a district, this kansas district, dold trump won it by 27 points last november. they held a special election for this house seat. the margin was only 7. republican won but much closer. that was the closest congressional race in that district in a generation. then you take a look at montana. like i said, donald trump won the state by 21 points last november.
democrats brought the margin down to 6. this is what democrats say. they say we re not winning these, but they re deep red districts and we re shaving margins off what the republicans normally do. this is building toward put up or shut up time for the democrats. it s a few weeks in georgia. this is the suburbs north of atlanta. this district is everything democrats say they need to take back the house in 2018. this is a district that donald trump won by just one point. if democrats win this on june 20th, that puts them where they say they need to be. heading into 2018. if they lose, they got a lot of explaining to do. steve at that big board. i could watch you at that board for 30 minutes. garrett, that s host card pretty in boseman, montana. that s a nice assignment. thank you both. enjoy your weekend. there are now five different investigations at least into campaign ties to russia or their
abracadabra. the stage is yours. step two: choose la quinta. the only hotel where you can redeem loyalty points for a free night-instantly and win at business. i own my own company. i had some severe fatigue, some funny rashes. finally, listening to my wife, went to a doctor. and i became diagnosed with hodgkin s lymphoma .thadiagnosis was tough. i had to put my trust in somebody. when i first met steve, we recommended chemotherapy, and then we did high dose therapy and then autologous stem cell transplant. unfortunately, he went on to have progressive disease i thought that he would be a good candidate for immune therapy. it s an intravenous medicine that is going to make his immune system evade the tumor. with chemotherapy, i felt rough, fatigue, nauseous. and with immune therapy we ve had such a positive result. i m back to working hard. i ve honestly never felt this great.
and we don t know if because so many people voted early here, if whether or not this body slamming accusation actually boosted some of the supporters or tightened the margins. people were happy to see him fighting the unpopular liberal media. all right. steve, how is he able to do it? how was he able to pull it off, and did he win it or did democrats just lose it? a couple things. the basic political geography and demographics of montana may have won it for gianforte. we have a little bit of information on that split between the early vote and the same-day vote. it looks like quist did better on the same days than he did in the early vote. not a huge difference between them. also a question of just is the nature of people who vote early versus people who vote same day, was that always going to favor the democrats. that s a mystery for the ages now the last-minute development with the fight of the reporter,