A new poll in the Maine Senate race showed Graham Platner losing the bloc he most needs to win over. In a New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll released Monday, Platner trailed Susan Collins 37% to 58% among registered voters without a four-year college degree, even as the race overall was dead even.
That gap matters because Platner has sold himself as the kind of candidate who can speak to working people. He has repeatedly pledged to fight corporate greed and the billionaire oligarchy, and his campaign has leaned hard on his identity as an oyster farmer and harbor master. But the numbers showed that message was not breaking through with voters outside the college-educated universe, the group that usually decides whether a blue-collar pitch is real or just rhetoric.
The poll also exposed a sharper split inside the electorate. Platner was up 37 points with White college-educated voters, but he trailed Collins by 23 points with White non-college-educated voters. That is where the warning light flashes. In the September 2020 New York Times/Siena poll, Collins led Sara Gideon 48% to 45% with White non-college-educated voters, a result the campaign world would now read as a 20-point swing from six years ago. Collins went on to win that race by about nine points statewide.
The problem for Platner is not only political; it is personal. Financial disclosures show he brings in relatively little money from oyster farming, and reports have suggested that he receives most of his income through veteran’s disability payments. He has also faced criticism over claims about his background, including the fact that he attended private schools such as The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, an exclusive $75,000-a-year boarding school. For voters who hear “working class” and then learn the details, the campaign’s image work starts to look less like biography and more like branding.
That is why the Monday poll landed so hard. It does not just show Platner in a dead heat statewide; it shows him struggling in the part of the electorate his campaign most wants to claim. If he cannot close that 21-point deficit with voters without a four-year degree, his path in Maine may depend less on the oyster-farmer story than on whether skeptical voters decide the rest of the state is willing to overlook it.
