Missoula Boasts 71 Percent Voter Turnout For Presidential Election

Missoula produced a heavy turnout at the polls for Tuesday's Presidential election, one that saw the Big Sky state turn red for Trump, Zinke and a host of other statewide races, despite the heavy local Democratic voting population.

Elections administrator Rebecca Connors said turnout both at the polls and with absentee ballots was high.

"We had a phenomenal turnout on Tuesday," said Connors. "We had over 71 percent  voter turnout and we had 85 percent absentee voter turnout. Everybody came out for this election. It was a high profile campaign for the past two years and everybody wanted to get it done."

Connors said in addition to many voters who had allowed their registrations to run out, there were a great many who were first time voters.

"We saw a lot of voters who had never voted before in their lifetime," she said. "These are people in the 50's 60's and even 70's who said this election was important, so they came out to vote."

Connors said she and her staff had three different satellite locations to help voters register for the general election.

"We took our office to Frenchtown, to Seeley Lake and then we went to the university to make sure that we could capture people before election day so that they wouldn't have to stand in line to register on Election Day," she said. "I would say that about 98 percent of those voters were already registered, thanks to many groups who had held voter registration drives on campus."