Politics
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Democrat Troy Jackson leads U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in two new polls released Thursday, contrasting with a survey out the same day showing the Republican incumbent ahead.
A University of New Hampshire poll found Jackson ahead 51% to 47%, changing little from his 3-point lead in the same poll in July. Earlier in the day the University of Massachusetts Lowell and YouGov released a poll taken over a relatively long period of time between Aug. 28 and Sept. 14 that had Jackson up 48% to 43% with 6% undecided.
The Thursday deluge of polling cut in opposite directions, largely because the surveys disagree on the voters most likely to decide the race. They split on how independents lean, how many Democrats are willing to cross over for Collins and whether her image has improved over the course of the race.
Both new leads are within the polls’ margins of error, which are 2.7 points for UNH and 4.66 points for UMass Lowell. The Times poll had Collins ahead 49-46. The race is a true toss up, with Decision Desk HQ, Bangor Daily News’ election partner, giving both candidates roughly 50-50 chances of winning.
Things are tight in the key demographics. Independents split 47-47 in the Times poll. They favored Jackson 49-47 in the UNH poll and 40-32 in the UMass Lowell survey, where 22% were undecided.
Crossover voting, a key to Collins’ 2020 win, also varied. In the Times poll, she won a whopping 12% of voters who backed Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024, while Jackson got only 3% of Trump voters. UMass Lowell had Collins winning 8% of Harris voters and Jackson winning 10% of Trump voters.
The widest gap is in how voters see the five-term incumbent. The Times poll had Collins’ favorability above water at 51% to 48%, while UNH had her at 37-51 and UMass Lowell at 40-47. Earlier polls from Fox News and CNN both had her 10 points underwater.
Jackson, a former Maine Senate president from Allagash, is viewed more negatively than positively in all three polls. But he has now led in six of eight public polls of the Senate race released since early August.
None of the three polls released Thursday fully captured reaction to a ProPublica report published Tuesday on a shelved federal corruption inquiry that touched on Collins. The UNH and UMass Lowell polls ended before it was released, and the Times poll ended the same day.
The environment remains difficult for Republicans. UMass Lowell found 37% of likely voters approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance and 72% say the country is on the wrong track. But Collins’ supporters appear more locked in, with 92% saying they would definitely vote for her, compared with 85% of Jackson voters.