Two months of the online fight over Montana’s I-194, the “Montana Plan,” ahead of Nov 3.
Key finding: Online, Yes is louder. No is wider. And the rest of the country is talking about Hawai’i.
About this series
Ballot Signals is a daily narrative intelligence series on 2026’s biggest ballot fights. Each day until Election Day, we publish a Rolli IQ report on one measure and set it beside the latest public data. On Nov 4, we check the signals against the results. This is Report 4.
| Date | Measure and what it does | Our question |
|---|---|---|
| Thu Oct 29 | AI data centers Local votes to ban, pause or require approval for new data centers. |
Where is the opposition going? |
| Fri Oct 30 | California Prop 40 A one-time 5% tax on the wealth of Californians worth over $1 billion, mostly for health care. |
Yes won the feed while it lost ground in the polls. |
| Sat Oct 31 | Missouri Amendment 3 Would repeal the abortion-rights amendment voters passed in 2024. |
The polls are tied. Where is each side’s message landing? |
| Sun Nov 1 | Montana I-194 (this report) Would bar corporations, unions, nonprofits and other groups from spending to influence Montana elections. |
There is no public poll. What does the conversation show? |
| Mon Nov 2 | California Prop 39 Would require voters to show ID, add ID numbers to mail ballots, and check voters’ citizenship. |
Voter ID polls well, yet the measure trails 42 to 51. Why the gap? |
| Wed Nov 4 | The results What the online signals showed, next to what voters decided. |
Did the signals hold? |
What a Yes or No vote means
A Yes vote on I-194 bans the spending. Corporations, unions, nonprofits and other “artificial persons” could no longer spend money to influence Montana elections. Individuals still could. A group that breaks the ban would lose its legal right to exist in Montana. A No vote keeps today’s rules, under which those groups can keep spending.
The measure works around the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision rather than overturning it, using the state’s power to define what corporations may do. It is a statute, not a constitutional amendment, so the Legislature can change it in 2027. The Yes campaign, The Montana Plan, is backed by former Govs. Marc Racicot (R) and Steve Bullock (D) and former Sen. Jon Tester (D). The No side, Montanans for Free Speech, includes the Montana Chamber of Commerce, and the Montana GOP and Montana Libertarian Party also oppose it.
There is no public poll of I-194. The Yes side had about $240,000 by August, and the top listed donors to its main funder were from California and Illinois. Opposition has come mostly through business groups and op-eds. By Oct 27, about 43% of Montana’s absentee ballots were already back, so much of the vote was cast while this conversation ran.
In one page
Yes is louder. No is wider.
On Facebook, where much of Montana’s local conversation happens, posts supporting I-194 drew 71% of the engagement. Without the single most-engaged post, Yes still leads with 63%. But twice as many accounts posted against it: 26 to 13, across 35 No posts and 25 Yes posts. Half of all Yes engagement on Facebook came from the campaign’s own page and leaders.
Yes is a campaign. No is a network.
Across X and Facebook, 97 posts took a side. The 40 Yes posts came mostly from the campaign itself (17) and national accounts (10). The 57 No posts came from a spread of Montana voices: officials and candidates (16), party organizations (14), residents (17), and business and labor groups. One labor local, IBEW 233, urged a No vote over the measure’s limits on unions.
On X, the split follows geography. Among accounts that list a Montana location, 21 of 25 posts taking a side were No, with 93% of the engagement. Among all other accounts, 11 of 12 were Yes. Location is self-reported in each profile.
Mid-October, No took X. Yes closed loud on both.
September belonged to No: 18 of the first 20 posts. In the first ten days of October, Yes led on both platforms. As ballots reached voters in mid-October, No took over X, holding 98% of engagement there, while Facebook stayed with Yes at 57%. In the final ten days, after endorsements from a bipartisan group of former officials and a virtual town hall with Pete Buttigieg and Steve Bullock, Yes made its biggest push and led on both platforms.
The country is talking about Hawai’i
Outside Montana, the idea behind I-194 travels under another state’s name. Among the 100 most-engaged X posts about states taking on Citizens United, about 9 in 10 interactions went to posts about Hawai’i, which passed a similar law in May. About 2 in 10 mention Montana. The most-shared post, with about 27,000 interactions, claimed Hawai’i “just became the first State in the Nation to end Citizens United.” It did not. Hawai’i’s law takes effect July 1, 2027, and faces two lawsuits, including one from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Hawai’i’s legislature passed a law. In Montana, voters decide.
No argued speech. Yes argued Citizens United.
The No side’s posts centered on speech: 63% of its engagement argued the measure would “silence” or “gag” Montanans who organize together. About half questioned who is really behind the Yes campaign, and about half warned about small businesses, churches, nonprofits and unions. A third argued it won’t work, because loopholes remain. The Yes side leaned on Citizens United and Hawai’i (51%), with smaller shares for “people, not corporations,” dark money, Montanans in charge, and its bipartisan backers.
Yes sounds hopeful. No sounds alarmed.
Rolli IQ labels the emotion in each post. Weighted by engagement, Yes-side posts read 93% happiness, mostly cheering endorsements and the promise of ending “dark money.” No-side posts split between anger (51%) and fear (46%), warning of lost rights and hidden donors.
Five moves before Nov 3
For campaigns and communicators, on either side: count voices, not just likes; discount the campaign’s own echo; don’t read national X as Montana; separate Hawai’i from Montana; and remember that much of the vote is already in.
Coming next
How to read a signal
A signal is not a poll. Online share is not vote share. Ballot Signals takes no side on any measure. What a signal can show is which arguments are gaining, how people feel about them, and who is carrying them.
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Method and how sure we are. Rolli IQ, public posts from Sep 1 to Oct 31, 2026. X was searched in three date windows; Facebook and Instagram once; Reddit, YouTube, Bluesky and Threads once. Instagram returned no posts, YouTube and Bluesky returned nothing usable, and Threads was excluded because results did not match the query. Reddit is used for context only. Side shares rest on 97 posts on X and Facebook that take a side (Yes: 15 on X, 25 on Facebook; No: 22 on X, 35 on Facebook), coded by the side they take. Arguments were coded by keyword, with the 20 most-engaged posts per side checked by hand; posts can make more than one argument. Emotion labels are Rolli IQ’s own and cover 59 of the 97 posts; the rest had no emotion detected. Account location is self-reported in each profile. The national Hawai’i comparison rests on the 100 most-engaged X posts about states and Citizens United. These are public posts, not a sample of voters, and there is no public poll to compare them against. Sources: Montana Supreme Court-approved ballot statement; Daily Montanan; Montana Free Press; KTVH (finance as of August); Montana Secretary of State via the Daily Montanan (absentee returns, Oct 27); Hawai’i Act 11 lawsuit filings. Private individuals are described, not named.
