Maine Senate Race Has Swung 20 Points Against Susan Collins, Who Trails Democrat Sara Gideon in Latest Poll

Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Getty Images

Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins is losing to Democratic challenger Sara Gideon in the latest poll of the state, in a race that has swung twenty points against Collins since polling began in the race.

According to a survey by Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, Gideon leads Collins by a comfortable four-point margin, outside the poll’s margin of error. Gideon received 46 percent to Collins’ 42 percent, in a race that Collins led by 16 points when polling began last June.

Collins’ approval is in the basement, with 36 percent approving of her job performance, versus 55 percent who disapprove. That’s even worse than Maine voters’ opinion of President Donald Trump, who despite getting clobbered by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the same poll (53% to 42%) still managed to edge out Collins with 41 percent approval and an equal 55 percent disapproval.

Maine Speaker of the House Gideon was even with 37 percent favorable/unfavorable, and 26 percent who said they “Don’t know enough about her to have an opinion.”

According to the pollster, Collins’ role in the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and her vote against impeaching Trump are factors in her slide, but Trump’s unpopularity is her biggest challenge.

And in a deep dive on Collins’ woes, The New York Times’ Emily Cochrane notes a broader erosion of her “carefully cultivated” moderate reputation:

While she has split with Mr. Trump more than any other Republican senator in the 116th Congress, Ms. Collins’s carefully cultivated reputation as a moderate has been damaged during his tenure, particularly after she backed the $1.5 trillion tax-cut package in 2017 and cast a decisive vote to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. When Justice Kavanaugh sided with the court’s conservative majority in an abortion decision last week, progressives renewed their attacks.

Perhaps the best illustration of Collins’ bind is her responses to Cochrane about the 2020 presidential race:

Unlike in 2016, when she very publicly declared that she would not vote for Mr. Trump, Ms. Collins refused on Saturday to say how she planned to vote come November.

“My inclination is just to stay out of the presidential and focus on my own race,” she said.

As for Mr. Biden, “I do not campaign against my colleagues in the Senate,” she added, explaining that taking on Mr. Biden, whom she knows “very well” from their days serving together there, would be akin to violating her own rule.

There’s still plenty of time for Collins to turn things around, but it’s not likely she’ll see a November like her last reelection bid, when she won with 69 percent of the vote.