Can Democrats still win in rural states? Montana’s Senate race offers high-stakes litmus test

He was a young and little-known underdog. So Max Baucus, candidate for Congress, decided to trek 630 miles across Montana and listen to people talk about their problems. "As luck would have it, on the first day, I walked into a blizzard," he recalls, pointing to a photo of his young self caked in snow. "It was cold! But the blizzard didn't last that long."

Baucus shed 12lbs during that two and a half month journey in 1974. He also made friends. The Democrat defeated a Republican incumbent and would soon go on to serve as a Montana senator for 36 years. He never lost an election but saw his beloved home state undergo many changes. Among them is the prospect that Democrats like him are now facing political extinction.

Jon Tester, a moderate Democrat who is one of Montana's current senators, is fighting for his political life in the 5 November election. Opinion polls suggest that he is trailing his Republican rival Tim Sheehy. Control of the closely divided Senate, and the ability to enable or stymie the ambitions of a President Kamala Harris or President Donald Trump, could hinge on the outcome.

The Senate race in Montana is widely seen as a litmus test of whether Democrats can still win in largely rural states that have embraced Trump's Republican party. It is also a study in whether the type of hyperlocal campaigning that Baucus practised half a century ago can outpace shifts in demographics, media and spending that have rendered all politics national.

"Montana was not yet discovered," recalled Baucus, 82, sitting near old campaign posters - "Democrat Max Baucus walks for Congress" - in the brick-and-wood institute that bears his name on Bozeman's idyllic main street. "There was much more retail politics, knocking on doors, shaking hands, going all around the community, knowing people personally. There's a saying that Montana is one big small town and that was very true back then. It's not quite as true today."

Tester, 68, a likable, unpretentious dirt farmer who is Montana through and through, epitomises the old retail politics. His campaign ads emphasise his rural background, including three fingers missing on his left hand - lost to a meat grinder that he still owns. He has been in the Senate for 18 years and praised for his work on behalf of the agriculture industry, military veterans and Native American communities.

For some voters, such authenticity still resonates. Nels Johnson, 62, who works for a conservation organisation in Bozeman, said: "I'm going to vote for Jon Tester because he's a third-generation Montanan, knows Montana values and what Montana hopes to be. His opponent is not as in touch."