On the January 10 edition of CNN Newsroom, CNN congressional correspondent Dana Bash, discussing senators who have recently expressed opposition to President Bush's expected proposal to increase troop levels in Iraq, baselessly asserted that “the president is still very, very popular” in the “red state” of Montana. In fact, the latest Survey USA tracking poll for Montana, conducted November 9-11, 2006, reported that 45 percent of Montana respondents approved of “the job” Bush “is doing as president” and 51 percent disapproved (with a +/- 4.1-percent margin of error). In Survey USA's November polls, Bush had a higher approval rating than disapproval rating in only Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. Prior to the November 2006 elections, Media Matters for America documented a pattern in the media of falsely characterizing states that Bush won in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections as “pro-Bush” states currently.

From the January 10 edition of CNN's CNN Newsroom:

BASH: Another thing that happened just a short while ago. A Democrat from a red state, from the state of Montana, Senator Max Baucus, comes from a state where the president is still very, very popular. Senator Baucus has not really said much at all about any kind of opposition to the war, anything much since he voted for the war almost four years ago. He came out again just a short while ago and said that he now regrets his vote for the war in Iraq, thinks it is a mistake, and he too opposes the president's plan.