The contest to fill retiring U.S. Senator Jim Risch’s Idaho seat has produced a striking pattern of contradictory polling, with multiple surveys of the same race yielding significantly different pictures of where the candidates stand.

Risch, who has held the seat since 2009, announced he would not seek another term, setting off one of the most closely watched Senate primaries and general election races Idaho has seen in years. The open seat has drawn a competitive field and intense outside interest, along with a flurry of polling.

The variance across surveys has raised questions about methodology, sample composition, and which results more accurately reflect the likely electorate. Large gaps between polls in the same race can stem from differences in how pollsters screen for likely voters, when the survey was conducted, or who commissioned it — factors that can each move results by several percentage points.

Idaho leans heavily Republican at the statewide level, making the Republican primary historically the decisive contest. But the presence of multiple credible candidates and divergent poll numbers has complicated efforts to read the race with confidence.

For voters trying to make sense of the conflicting data, political analysts generally advise looking at polling averages rather than any single survey, and paying attention to whether polls are conducted by partisan or nonpartisan firms.

For more on how the polling dispute has shaped coverage of the race, see our earlier analysis of the dueling polls defining Idaho’s Senate contest. Separately, a statewide election survey found fewer than half of Idaho’s 2026 candidates responded to candidate questionnaires, adding another layer of uncertainty to voter research ahead of November.