Collins was first elected to the Senate for Maine in 1996, meaning the sixth-term-seeking incumbent has served a whopping 30 years and is now the seventh-most-senior senator. In the 21st century, she has regularly won reelection by 20+ points despite Maine’s increasingly liberal tilt. In 2020, though, Collins beat then-Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon by “only” 8.6 points. (Thanks to the quirks of Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, I would say this is better measured as conservative-aligned candidates beating liberal-aligned candidates by about 5 points; but I digress.) The result was a remarkable polling miss and a gobsmacked Democratic Party as Biden carried the state by 8.7 points at the presidential level. This victory was likely due in part to Amy Coney Barrett. Just eight days before Election Day, Collins became the only Republican senator to vote against confirming Barrett to the Supreme Court—a conspicuous break with her party that may have revitalized the bipartisan appeal on which she had built her career. Nonetheless, this still represented an impressive improvement for Democrats. Collins had beaten her previous challenger in 2014 by a stunning 37 points.
Democrats’ hubris in 2020 seemed to still haunt them as they began their do-over in 2026. Concerns exploded as scandal after scandal mounted for Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner. The situation reached a breaking point in July when a sexual-assault allegation emerged, several high-profile backers pulled their support, and Platner ultimately dropped out. Notably, he did so before a deadline that allowed the Maine Democratic Party to appoint a replacement.
Enter fifth-generation logger Troy Jackson, former president of the Maine Senate, who represented a Trump-voting district as a progressive Democrat and recently lost the Democratic primary for governor in a tight race. In many ways, Jackson represents a more palatable version of Platner: a middle-aged white guy from rural Maine selling a brand of left-wing economic populism.
While Democrats breathed a resounding sigh of relief after replacing Platner on the ballot, they weren’t about to count their chickens. Their proverbial white whale remained, and with a newfound gust of Democrats-in-disarray wind in her sails.
Two months after the replacement, polling offers little comfort to Democrats. At the time of writing, Jackson leads Collins by roughly 2–3 points; a narrow margin in the Era of Polling Errors. While polling has generally been more accurate in recent elections without Trump on the ballot, it’s hard not to wonder whether there’s a Collins effect as well. In 2020, Maine’s presidential polls missed by only about 2.5 points, compared with a roughly 12-point error in the Senate race.
Additionally, Collins has been hitting the campaign trail hard. She has hosted 29 campaign events to Jackson’s 28, raised roughly $19 million, and done seven interviews. She has even managed to raise an additional $10 million in outside contributions from nearly 100 of her closest billionaire friends.
Despite it all, Collins may be facing her toughest match yet. For all her attempts to brand herself as an above-the-fray bipartisan, we now live in a time when politics are more nationalized than ever. Across the past three presidential elections, 94% of Senate races were won by the party that also carried the state for president. All to say, if you thought Kamala was Brat in 2024, you are less likely than ever to turn around and vote Republican for Senate.
That’s tough for a Republican in a state Harris won by 7 points in a R+1.5 national environment. And if we humor the polls for a moment, the national environment at the time of writing sits around D+6-7, or about 9-10 points to the left of 2024.
Of course, national swings don’t hit every state uniformly. The country could be considerably bluer this year because of increased turnout in cities or reversions among Hispanic and Asian voters, trends that may translate poorly to the second-most-rural and third-whitest state in the country. Nonetheless, a 7-point Democratic presidential margin is already a substantially blue baseline, and while the magnitude of the political shift is open for debate, the environment is likely to be much bluer this year.
To which you might argue: Collins has done it before. Surely she can do it again.
But has anything else changed since 2020?
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the right to choose established by Roe v. Wade. Collins, who describes herself as supportive of abortion rights, was a key vote in confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. As one of the five justices who voted to scrap Roe and nearly five decades of judicial precedent, his confirmation was pivotal, thus tightly implicating Collins in this historically unpopular ruling.
This past April, Collins cast the deciding vote for a Republican-backed plan providing $70 billion in funding for immigration enforcement agencies. The measure funds ICE for the next three years without any reforms such as requiring judicial warrants before agents enter private homes. Just three months later, 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, sparking immediate community outrage and protests.
Other controversial votes, including support for HHS Secretary RFK Jr., association with the Trump administration’s tariffs that have hit Maine particularly hard because of its close economic ties with Canada, and her initial support for the president’s increasingly unpopular war in Iran, have likely contributed to her deteriorating approval rating and cross-party appeal. As of the most recent estimates by Morning Consult, her disapproval rating sits at 54%, the second-highest of any senator in the country.
This has certainly been one of the most interesting Senate races of 2026, and my uncalled-for hot take is that, polls be damned, Maine may actually be the sleeper sleeper race. The race nobody is sleeping on when, perhaps, you can in fact briefly snooze, as Jackson comfortably wins this November.
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