AUGUSTA, Maine — A dominant performance in Saturday county caucuses has former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson in position to lock down the Democratic nomination to face U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in one of the nation’s biggest 2026 elections.
Jackson won at least 290 of the 319 delegates awarded on Saturday and only needs 11 more on Sunday to effectively clinch the right to replace Graham Platner on the ballot following a hurried, unprecedented and abbreviated process spun up by the Maine Democratic Party.
Here are three things to watch as Maine’s final eight counties caucus today.
Will the other candidates drop out?
Spokespeople for the top Jackson rivals in the Senate nominating race — former public health chief Nirav Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former 2nd District candidate Jordan Wood — did not respond to Saturday questions about exiting the race, even as Jackson’s delegate math edges toward insurmountable.
If Jackson’s strong performance continues into Sunday, it will be hard for others to remain in the race through Monday’s signature deadline to qualify for the deciding election at the July 25 convention in Bangor.
Sunday’s counties are smaller, giving Jackson’s rivals little room.
Aroostook, Knox, Oxford, Piscataquis, Sagadahoc, Somerset, Waldo and York caucus today, electing the final 181 delegates. At 84 delegates, York is the only remaining county of real size, meaning his rivals have little room left to make up any ground.
To keep this race competitive, one of them would have to essentially produce a clean Sunday sweep. That is nearly impossible given the strength of Jackson’s operation so far.
Jackson needs to quickly pivot to a hard general election.
Jackson needs to build one of the biggest campaigns in the country quickly to compete with Collins, who has long won decisive shares of Democrats and continued that in 2020 despite losing significant popularity in a blue state during the era of President Donald Trump.
The Democrat will start at a disadvantage. Republican-aligned groups have spent or reserved $112.4 million on the race so far, against $56.7 million on the Democratic side, according to AdImpact tracking data. Jackson raised the least amount of money in the five-person gubernatorial field and had to rely on an outside group to run ads for him.
But high-stakes races have a way of drawing gobs of money, and Jackson told reporters on Saturday in Augusta that his nascent Senate campaign raised half of what he did in the governor’s race within just four days. He said he hasn’t yet talked with national party leaders but expects those conversations once a nominee is set.
“I don’t know that money is going to be the problem here,” he said. “Time probably will be the biggest thing.”