Two Maine Polls Just Dropped. Is It Time to Fret About Graham Platner?

The Democratic Senate candidate is pretty much tied with Susan Collins, but she’s trouncing him with working-class voters. Why, and can he turn that around?

Two major polls of the Maine Senate race dropped this week, and they told the same story: The race is incredibly close, and Democrat Graham Platner has real work to do among the working class. He’s running an aggressively left-populist, antiestablishment campaign targeting the billionaire class—and boasts lots of blue-collar appeal—but GOP Senator Susan Collins is way ahead among those voters. Why?

The surveys—one from The New York Times and the other from Fox News—offer good and bad news for Platner. But they’re worrying some Democrats because a loss here deeply complicates the path to Senate control. Without Maine—which voted against Donald Trump by seven points in 2024—Democrats probably must win four out of five seats in Ohio, Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and North Carolina. Trump won all five states—most by lopsided margins—and now Democrats lead in the last but are tied or a bit behind in the others.

The Times survey has Platner up two among likely voters overall, 49–47, and the Fox poll has Collins up three, 50–47. It’s a dead heat—it’s winnable, but he should probably be leading by more given the state’s Democratic lean, which is being outweighed by the brutal press he’s sustained over his Nazi-like tattoo and alleged violence against women.

But note this: In the Times poll, Platner trails among voters without a college degree, a proxy for the working class, by 37–58. In the Fox poll, that’s 41–56. What’s driving this? One possibility: The Times poll has working-class voters saying Platner has “good character” by 37–57 and “the right kind of moral values” by 36–57.

On the plus side, Platner leads in the Times survey among women by 52–44, among young people by 59–32, and among college-educated voters by 66–32. But Platner’s candidacy is all about his blue-collar aura: He’s a........

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