‘Platner Tax!’ CNN Data Guru Reveals Why Democrats May Blow Race for Senate

CNN’s Harry Enten and John Berman discussed on Tuesday how Graham Platner, Democrats’ presumptive nominee for the Senate in Maine, may be blowing up his party’s chances of taking the upper chamber back this fall.

Enten began the segment by observing that the latest Platner scandal — the revelation that he cheated on his wife, whom he married in 2023, with multiple women online — has broken through, as Google searches for Platner in Maine are up 275% over the last three days.

“So one of our first glimpses into how this might affect Platner’s electoral fortunes is from the prediction market,” observed Enten. “You go back, you know, May 22 — what was that? About 10 days ago? Democrats had a 70% chance. That’s essentially Platner had a 70% chance of winning the general election. Now, that number has fallen, it’s fallen rather significantly. Look, he is still the favorite according to prediction markets, a 59% chance, but you’re basically going from about a 7-in-10 shot to about a 6-in 10 shot.”

“This is now a race that if you were projecting it out, I would say would be well within the margin of error, I dare say too close to call. Although Platner’s still favored, but his chances have gone down significantly,” he added.

Berman proceeded to ask Enten how Platner’s general election opponent, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has performed relative to the polls in past cycles, and the chief data analyst revealed that Collins was underestimated by eight points in 2008 and 2014, and then twelve points in 2020.

“It was always going to be difficult for Democrats to take the Senate in this election, but really any path to taking the Senate goes through Maine. So what are we seeing about the chances of taking the Senate right now?” followed up Berman.

“Yeah, if you take a look, the chance of getting the Senate right now, look back, you go back two months ago, it was about a 50-50 split, right? Now Republicans, again, it’s close, but Republicans are now slightly favored to take back the Senate, no doubt in part because of what is going on in Maine, which just makes that path, which was already difficult, a little bit more treacherous,” replied Enten.

“This feels like a Platner tax,” quipped Berman.

Watch above via CNN.

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