With the battle for control of the Senate intensifying its focus on a handful of contests, CQ Politics has declared that the Montana race is now less a dead-heat and more a likely Dem pickup, changing its rating of the race between GOP incumbent Conrad Burns and Dem Jon Tester from "No Clear Favorite" to "Leans Democratic":

Tester, an organic farmer and president of the Montana Senate, leads Burns by 7 percentage points, 48 percent to 41 percent, in an average of the past five independent polls.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), meanwhile, was focusing a significant amount of money on the ad wars in the final weeks. The party’s national Senate campaign committee spent $2 million on the race over the election cycle, $1.5 million of which was spent just since Sept. 30.

The DSCC’s partisan counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, meanwhile, was staying out of the independent expenditures arena, although it donated $37,000 to Burns’ campaign in March 2005.

Republicans have made much of MoveOn’s intervention in an effort to portray Tester as out of the Montana mainstream. But Tester’s country-boy manner, complete with flattop haircut and big belly, have made it hard to portray him as a left-wing extremist.

The most recent polls on the race are here.