---
name: state-of-montana-survey
description: Look up what Montanans surveyed think and who they are, from The State of Montana 2026, a weighted random-sample survey of Montana adults fielded by Montana State University for Last Best Future. Use for Montana public opinion on policy, elected officials, the future, housing, work, values and towns, statewide or by party, ideology, age, education, home ownership or years in Montana.
---

# The State of Montana survey

## When to use

Questions about what Montanans think, value or experience where survey figures help: support for policies (public lands, money in politics, teacher pay, childcare, second-home and tourism taxes, housing density, AI data centers, immigration, the federal debt, democracy abroad), grades for the mayors of Montana’s eight largest towns (pooled), the Governor, Senators and President, optimism, the American Dream and AI, housing costs, work, and how residents rate their towns.

## How

1. Statewide figures: `GET https://thestateofmontana.org/data/findings.json` (or `https://thestateofmontana.org/report.md` as Markdown).
2. A group: `GET https://thestateofmontana.org/api/results?<filters>`, JSON, or Markdown with `format=md`. Filters:
   - party: republican, democrat, independent, other
   - ideology: extremely-liberal, liberal, slightly-liberal, moderate, slightly-conservative, conservative, extremely-conservative
   - education: less-than-hs, hs, associate, bachelors, graduate
   - ownRent: own, rent, other
   - age: 18-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, 75-84, 85+ (ranges with `..`, e.g. `55-64..85+`)
   - yearsInMontana: under 2, 2-5, 6-10, 11-20, 20+
3. Exact question wording and answer codes: `https://thestateofmontana.org/survey.md`. API description: `https://thestateofmontana.org/openapi.json`.

## Rules

- Say "of Montanans surveyed" and cite https://thestateofmontana.org.
- Percentages are weighted shares of everyone who answered (Unsure included). Statewide margin of error about ±4.4 points; group results are directional.
- If a response has `"suppressed": true`, the group was too small and the figures are everyone's: say so rather than reporting them as the group's.
- No respondent counts, counties or individual answers are available.