With less than a week left until Election Day, the momentum still seems to remain with the Democrats. Anyone saying otherwise is just whistling past the graveyard, or maybe they placed a large prediction market contrarian bet that they’re hoping will hit pay-dirt. It’s obvious that Democrats are going to flip more seats than Republicans, it’s just a matter of the results being a wave or a trickle.
So, it doesn’t hurt to examine where that wave could break instead of crash ashore for Democrats and give Republicans a fighting chance to hang onto their Senate majority, which is their best bet for retaining one of the Congressional chambers. The House is all but flipped.
And no, I didn’t place a large prediction market bet. That’s for the get-rich-quick schemers who’ve never heard of an index fund.
I’m specifically looking at Maine where Democrats have consistently struggled to oust longtime Senator Susan Collins, the last Republican in federal office anywhere in New England.
If we were just going by the numbers, the five term Republican incumbent would be in deep trouble. Collins is the second-most unpopular senator in the country, with her constituents giving her a 41% approval rating and a 54% disapproval rating. Her party’s leader is 25 points underwater in his approval rating in Maine. 53% of likely voters are concerned that Collins votes with Trump too often. The generic environment in the state has shifted about 10 points to the left relative to its 2024 presidential results.
But Collins has been here before. Her re-election in 2020 was supposed to spell her political doom, but she ended up cruising to a comfortable 8.5-point win margin, nearly matching Joe Biden’s 9-point win in the state. So, is she on her way to a repeat this year?
Well, let’s look at the Democratic nominee Troy Jackson. His favorable/unfavorable rating isn’t great for someone trying to knock off an unpopular incumbent. But it could be a lot worse considering the utter mess of a process Democrats had selecting a nominee, which isn’t worth hashing over. But it gave Jackson, as a last minute sub-in, just over three months to build out a campaign machine that most nominees would have been building for months, if not years, before that. But likely voters are less concerned he is too liberal, at 46% saying so, while they are concerned that Collins is too close to Trump. So, Republicans may not have done the best job of defining him negatively before he could define himself.
A lot will probably depend on just how much President Trump’s unpopularity drives people to vote against Collins. In 2020, Trump was modestly 6 points underwater in his approval rating in the state, versus -25 today. This will plainly be an economy election, and 51% of Mainers rate their family’s financial situation worse now than two years ago. It’s also a midterm election, so Collins won’t be able to depend on the voters Trump can singularly drive to the polls when he is on the ballot. Turnout in The Pine Tree State averages around 60% in a midterm in recent years versus mid-70s in a presidential year, so get-out-the-vote operations will be key on both sides. Their supporters are about equal in the intensity of their support with 68% of Jackson supporters saying they strongly support him and 69% of Collins supporters saying they strongly support her.
Where independents go remains to be seen. A Fox News poll has Collins leading Jackson by 13 points among independents. But a Marist College poll has Jackson up by 9 with independents. That’s a wide degree of variability from high-quality polls.
So, what does it all mean on Election Day? Toss a coin and hope that your preferred candidate does a better job of turning out their voters. Susan Collins is running in a bad environment for Republicans, but neither her nor Jackson have been able to put much daylight between each other in polling. If Collins loses, the national environment will have sunk her. If Collins wins, then it’s evident why she remains the last Republican standing in New England.
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