released a statewide poll on Wednesday that put Troy Jackson ahead of Susan Collins, 48-46%, in Maine’s Senate race. The result keeps the contest tight even after Jackson replaced Graham Platner as the Democratic nominee in July.
That closeness matters because Collins has held Maine in the Senate since 1997, and the new numbers show a race that still turns on a small slice of voters. Jackson also led among voters who said they were absolutely certain to vote, 50-46%, a sign that the front edge is real but hardly secure.
The survey points to the same split in the concerns driving the race. Fifty-five percent of Maine voters said they were worried Collins votes with Donald Trump too often, while 43% said Jackson is too close to the Democratic Socialist movement. Among independents, concern about Collins' ties to Trump outweighed concern about Jackson's progressive alignment by 14 points.
Jackson’s support also looks softer than Collins’. Sixty-one percent of his backers said they were mainly voting against Collins, while only 36% said they were voting for Jackson himself. Collins had the stronger core of committed support, with 71% of her backers saying they were voting mainly for her and 27% saying they were voting against Jackson.
That gap helps explain why the race is still so unsettled. Roughly 9 in 10 partisans were behind their own candidate, independents narrowly preferred Jackson, women backed him by 4 points and men were evenly divided. But one in five Jackson supporters said they may change their mind before voting, which leaves the result open to movement even after a poll that gives him a narrow edge.
Collins won her fifth term in 2020 by nearly 9 percentage points, but this survey suggests the next test may be far closer. If the margin holds, it would show Jackson has turned the contest into a referendum on Collins; if it slips, the race could settle back into the kind of late swing that has often decided Maine Senate contests.
