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1944 Montana gubernatorial election

Election for Governor of Montana

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 3, 2025
Entity authorityQ17512208 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1944 Montana gubernatorial election took place on November 7, 1944. Incumbent Governor of Montana Sam C. Ford, who was first elected Governor in 1940, ran for re-election. He won the Republican primary and moved on to the general election, where he was opposed by Leif Erickson, a former Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court and the Democratic nominee. Although then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt comfortably won the state in that year's presidential election, Ford defeated Erickson by a wide margin to win his second and final term as governor. This election is the first time that an incumbent Republican Governor of Montana was re-elected or won re-election.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “1944 Montana gubernatorial election” as election for Governor of Montana. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Montana, gubernatorial and election.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1944, 1940—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Montana, gubernatorial and election providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “1944 Montana gubernatorial election”, the useful work is to connect “election for Governor of Montana” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 3, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q17512208. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1944 and 1940.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1944 Montana gubernatorial election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.