Election 2026
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BANGOR, Maine — Troy Jackson’s campaign emphasized voter turnout Saturday in one of his last events before Election Day in a tight race against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins that has some supporters on edge.
He addressed about a dozen workers and a group of reporters at a campaign field office in the former Bangor Sandwich Company storefront that afternoon, where staffers were training and supplying volunteers to canvass. Supporters knocked 50,000 doors last weekend alone, according to the campaign.
Jackson’s short speech focused on his campaign’s central message of fighting for working people. He railed against President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and other billionaires, framing Tuesday as a “change election” that’s about more than himself as a candidate.
“We will not outspend them, but we will outwork them,” he said.
In brief comments to reporters who stopped him afterward as he departed across Hammond Street for another event, Jackson said the race is tight and Collins is a strong candidate, but he’s confident and believes the election will come down to voter turnout.
Recent polls have given him slim or single-digit leads over Collins, who is seeking reelection to a sixth term in a race that could determine control of the Senate. Jackson became the party’s nominee in July after Graham Platner dropped out of the race following a sexual assault allegation.
In the last race for the seat in 2020, Collins’ Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, consistently polled ahead of her but lost the election.
That memory, and polling indications that this year’s race appears tighter, has some supporters nervous three days before the election. But they also said things have changed since 2020 and feel the sitting senator’s image as a moderate has continued to erode; polling has also suggested Collins faces a tougher environment this year.
Maddie Johnson, of Bangor, said as she stopped into the office for more canvassing materials that most people she’s talked to — which, this close to election, are those who haven’t made up their minds — still seem ambivalent about who they’ll vote for. Some aren’t excited about Jackson, but support other Democratic candidates down the ballot.
Remembering Collins’ surprise victory over Gideon in the last race is “nerve-wracking” for Johnson. Collins has been in office longer than Johnson has been alive, and things have only seemed to get worse, she said.
But she thinks Gideon and Jackson are much different candidates — Jackson has a tougher, everyman personality with more populist appeal, in Johnson’s view — while Collins is six years older now with six more years of “failures” under her belt.
In the final days before finding out whether that will lead to a different outcome, Johnson is focused on doing what she can do to try to bolster local turnout.
“It’s definitely a stressful election,” she said. “I know it’s going to be a tight race.”
Katy Bolduc, another canvasser from Bangor, was also worried about Tuesday.
Most of her door-knocking interactions have been positive, she said, though the attack ads Collins supporters have poured millions into are proving effective. Other people have wanted to talk to her as a listening ear about the deep, long-running anxieties over the country’s trajectory, Bolduc added.
By 2020, people were no longer seeing Collins as the moderate senator she had developed a reputation to be, Bolduc said, also citing the senator’s votes that have helped Republicans and support Trump policies, such as her vote in favor of $70 billion in ICE and Border Patrol funding earlier this year.
She also thinks this race is different from the Gideon contest, though she felt positive about that candidate’s chances at the time.
“I am a little anxious. Everyone is,” Bolduc said. “…But I’m hopeful.”
