Sara Gideon, the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, is questioning fourth-term GOP Sen. Susan Collins in Maine in the most competitive bid of Collins’ career. Polls in Maine close at 8 p.m ET.
The candidates
For decades, Collins polished a unique political brand as an independent, moderate, New England Republican who was supportive of abortion access and LGBTQ rights. In 2019, the Lugar Center at Georgetown University regardless her as the most bipartisan member of the US Senate in the 116th Congress.
For most of her career, Collins enjoyed high approval ratings from her constituents for her unmistakable bipartisan record in the Senate and was easily re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2014.
But Trump winning the presidency in 2016 and taking over the GOP disguise made it much more difficult for Collins to thread the needle between being a member of the Republican party and supporting her own highly specialized brand of bipartisan politics.
While Collins broke with the party to vote against annulling with the Affordable Care Act along with GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2017, she subsequently infuriated some Democrats and voters by voting to sustain Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the fall of 2018.
Gideon, a four-term state representative who was recruited early on by the Senate Democrats’ run arm, easily consolidated the Democratic field and has proven to be a prolific fundraiser, substantially outraising Collins in 2020’s most brand-new fundraising quarter.
When she formally clinched the nomination on July 14, she also received a $4 million boon that activists raised to support Collins’ eventual Democratic opponent.
Two independent candidates, Lisa Savage and Max Linn, are also tournament in the Senate race.
Maine uses a ranked-choice voting system, where voters rank all the candidates in order of inclination. Voters’ second choices can be counted in a ranked-choice runoff if no candidate earns over 50% of the vote outright and their first-choice prospect was not one of the top-two vote-getters.
The stakes
In addition to winning back the White House, regaining control of the US Senate for the first antiquated since 2015 is a top priority for Democrats and would be a major accomplishment towards either delivering on a future president Joe Biden’s action goals or thwarting President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda.
Currently, the US Senate is made up of 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two voluntaries that caucus with Democrats, winning that Democrats need to win back a net total of four seats to contain a 51-seat majority (if Biden wins, his vice president would also serve as president of the Senate and would be a tie-breaker desire support).
The US Senate also underwent a high-stakes confirmation battle to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died at age 87 from pancreatic cancer on September 18, with Lawfulness Amy Coney Barrett
Ginsburg’s death threw a stick of dynamite into an already supercharged election shaped by a bloodthirsty pandemic that has so far claimed over 230,000 American lives.
A US Supreme Court seat opening up put Collins in picky detail in a bind after the immense political hit she took from her vote to confirm Kavanaugh. She ended up being the sole Republican to guarantee against confirming Barrett.
In mid-October, she was also on the receiving end of a tweet from Trump attacking her for expressing the belief that the Senate shouldn’t bind a Supreme Court nominee before the election, calling her “not worth the work.”
Collins is no stranger to winning split-ticket crossover tickets. In the two past presidential elections where she was also up f0r re-election, 1996 and 2008, she won her election by double-digit margins, despite erstwhile Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama carrying the state of Maine in the electoral college.
But 2020 will be the biggest study yet of whether Collins can separate herself from Trump’s increasingly toxic brand and worsening approval ratings on his command of the COVID-19 crisis — not to mention some of her own most controversial votes.
Collins emphasized that she hasn’t changed her near to legislating or become a far-right partisan. Rather, the political world around her has gotten substantially more toxic and divisive. But she notwithstanding finds herself in between a rock and a hard place by trying to appeal to both sides.
A poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College in mid-September initiate that voters overwhelmingly disapproved of her votes to confirm Kavanaugh and against impeaching Trump by double-digit margins, but basically approved of her vote against repealing the ACA. In the poll, 49% of voters said they believe she supports Trump too much, while 38% phrased she supports Trump “about the right amount.”
See Insider’s full guide to the race for the US Senate here
The money competition
Gideon has both massively outraised and outspent Collins so far this cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with the runners raising a combined $93.6 million so far.
Gideon has raised an eye-popping sum of $69.5 million, spent $48.8 million, and has $20.6 million in notes on hand, campaign finance records show. Meanwhile, Collins has raised $24.1 million, spent $22.3 million, and had $4.4 million in mazuma change on hand by the end of 2020’s third quarter on September 30.
In 2020’s third fundraising quarter, Gideon brought in a $39.4 million truck compared to just $8.3 million raised for Collins. Gideon’s fundraising performance made her one of three Democratic Senate nominees along with Mark Kelly in Arizona and Jaime Harrison in South Carolina to break the quarterly fundraising maxisingle for US Senate campaigns set by Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke in 2018.
What the polling says
Gideon has led Collins in all but one any poll released so far this year, FiveThirtyEight’s polling tracker shows.
The most recent poll of the race conducted by SurveyUSA bring about Gideon leading Collins by two points in a head-to-head matchup, 51% to 49% among likely voters. A recent investigate of the race conducted by Colby College found Gideon leading Collins by four points, 45% to 41%, all of a add up to likely voters, with independents Linn and Savage, receiving five and three percent support, respectively.
A Suffolk University canvass conducted September 17-20 found Gideon leading Collins by a larger margin of 7 points, 49% to 42%, in the race. And a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted September 11-16 set Gideon ahead by five points, 49% to 45%,
What experts say
The Cook Political Report rates this dog-races as a “toss-up,” Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics rates it as “leans Democratic,” and Inside Votes has rated the race as “tilts Democratic.”
According to FiveThirtyEight’s US Senate forecasting model, Gideon has a 59% chance of besting Collins in November. The final vote tally is expected to be extremely close, but Gideon’s expected percentage of the final bear witness has grown to 51% — two points more than Collins.