A poll released Monday found nearly half of Mainers do not approve of Gov. Janet Mills’ performance, which is the highest disapproval mark for the Democrat who took office in 2018.
The 49 percent of Mainers who disapprove of Mills mostly cited her handling of the state budget and finances, according to the latest University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll. Far smaller numbers of her detractors cited her handling of housing and immigration (5 percent) and health care (4 percent) in explaining their dissatisfaction, per the poll.
Mills, who will leave office at the end of 2026, gained national attention after engaging Friday in a tense back-and-forth exchange with President Donald Trump over the state’s policies allowing transgender girls to compete in scholastic sports, but the UNH survey was done before that, with the 855 respondents completing it online between Feb. 13 and 17. Only 1 percent of those dissatisfied with Mills cited her handling of LGBTQ+ issues, the survey found.
The 48 percent of Mainers who approve of Mills in the latest poll marks a decline from her approval ratings that hovered between 53 percent to 60 percent since 2023. The new poll found 94 percent of Democrats approve of the governor’s job performance while 42 percent of independents do. Just 2 percent of Republicans approve of her, the lowest point after more than a fifth of Republicans said they approved of her in late 2023, when Mills partially agreed with conservatives on opposing sweeping gun control following the Lewiston mass shooting.
The dissatisfaction with budget issues will not surprise State House observers. Democrats who narrowly control the Legislature and Republicans have been feuding over a short-term budget that seeks to fill a $118 million MaineCare funding gap, with a final vote on it set for Tuesday.
But lawmakers then have to pass a two-year budget by this summer to fill a roughly $450 million shortfall. Mills proposed an $11.6 billion plan that has drawn pushback from the right and left because it pitches a $1 per pack increase to Maine’s $2 cigarette tax and cuts various health and social service programs to balance the budget through 2027.
The new survey found 55 percent of Mainers strongly or somewhat support the governor’s plan to increase the cigarette tax, with 81 percent of Democrats and half of independents backing it while 52 percent of Republicans oppose it.
Of those who approved of Mills in the latest UNH poll, the most (19 percent) cited her handling of abortion in the wake of the governor and Democratic lawmakers expanding and protecting abortion access since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The next two highest shares approved of her handling of COVID-19 (14 percent) since the pandemic and of her handling of budget and finances (9 percent).
On a separate question that is similar to the approval metric, 43 percent of Mainers said they have a “favorable” opinion of Mills, 43 percent said they have an “unfavorable” opinion, 13 percent said they are “neutral” and 1 percent were unsure, according to the poll.