Key GOP Senate Candidate Outperforming Public Polling
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A recent poll shows GOP Senate candidate Susan Collins only trailing Dem candidate Graham Platner by 2% in the Maine Senate race.
This poll is better than Collins performed in any of the 2020 public polls, a race she went on to win.
Maine is going to be a key Senate race in 2026.
NYT/PPH has Platner 49, Collins 47https://t.co/ccn7yizTQc
Collins never even cracked 43 in 2020 public polls at least in RCP list https://t.co/IRSsBQIwBL
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) June 29, 2026
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is running ahead of where public polling placed her during her 2020 reelection campaign, even as a New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena survey finds Democrat Graham Platner narrowly leading in Maine’s 2026 Senate race.
The poll, conducted June 19-26 among 608 likely Maine voters, found Platner leading Collins 49 percent to 47 percent. The Times described the two-point edge as too small for polls to measure reliably, and the survey had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.
Burgess Everett, Semafor’s congressional bureau chief, noted on X that Collins’s 47 percent showing in the new poll is higher than any public 2020 poll listed by RealClearPolling before she ultimately won reelection.
The RealClearPolling list from Maine’s 2020 Senate race showed Collins trailing Democrat Sara Gideon in every poll listed before Election Day, with Collins’s support ranging from 38 percent to 44 percent. The listed surveys showed Collins at 42 percent in the final Emerson poll, 43 percent in a late October Colby College poll, 40 percent in a Pan Atlantic poll, 43 percent in a Bangor Daily News poll, 44 percent in a New York Times/Siena poll, and between 38 and 43 percent in the remaining listed surveys.
Platner is facing multiple controversies.
Past Reddit posts have resurfaced, he had a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol, and allegations that he sent sexually explicit messages to other women while married.
He was playing defense the past couple of months amid multiple controversies. They included inflammatory online comments made on Reddit, a well-publicized and now covered-up tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol, recent reports that he exchanged sexually explicit messages with several women while married, and allegations from ex-girlfriends of a history of rape fantasies, heavy drinking and violent episodes. Platner has called the allegations of violence untrue.
A day before the primary, a former high-level staffer from the Platner campaign wrote in the Washington Post that Platner “is not someone who would be good for Maine or for the country.”
The mounting controversies grabbed plenty of attention and triggered some Democrats in the nation’s capital to question whether Platner was damaged goods, but didn’t stop him from riding a populist wave to capture the nomination. More than 9 in 10 Platner supporters questioned in the poll said they had heard about his controversies but that their vote for him was based on where he stands on the issues.
Platner, who has acknowledged his battle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his three tours of duty in the war in Iraq with the Marines and one tour with the Army National Guard in Afghanistan, apologized for his controversial Reddit posts after some of them made headlines last fall soon after he launched his Senate campaign.
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