Politics
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Former Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree was in a toss-up race with Nirav Shah for the Democratic nomination for the right to replace outgoing Gov. Janet Mills in a poll released Thursday, five days before the primary election.
It was the first survey of the race to show Nirav Shah, the former Maine public health chief, in second place. But he and former Senate President Troy Jackson were bunched tightly together in the poll of nearly 500 Maine Democrats by SurveyUSA in partnership with the Bangor Daily News and the electoral reform group FairVote.
In the survey released Thursday, Pingree wins in a photo finish with Shah with 52% of votes to his 48% after a ranked-choice simulation. But more than 1 in 10 voters were still undecided in the first round, showing a deeply uncertain race given the ranked-choice voting dynamics.
Pingree and Jackson are in a ranked-choice voting alliance that is vying to overcome Shah. Shah and Jackson have gone toe-to-toe with both campaigns alleging “shady” tactics in recent days tied to dark-money PAC ads and messaging about each other’s records.
A pair of recent polls have shown Jackson surging late in the election. This is the first poll showing Pingree separating from Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who is in the alliance with Pingree and Jackson but was in fifth place with just 11% first-choice support. Former clean energy executive Angus King III was the top choice for 14% of Democrats.
Bellows notched the fewest first-choice votes and dropped first in the poll’s ranked-choice simulation. When undecided voters are set aside, her votes are reallocated and King drops, the contest narrows further, with Shah at 36% of the vote, Pingree 33% and Jackson 31%.
While a plurality of Jackson voters tap Bellows as their second choice, they prefer Pingree as their third choice over Shah, giving her the overall narrow lead in the final round of the simulation. However, small shifts in the electorate could swing the race. For example, her voters look poised to break for Shah rather than Jackson if she is the third candidate eliminated.
The survey shows that the alliance of more progressive candidates boosted U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner could hold some power in the final days of the campaign. The three sealed the alliance last week, urging voters to pick each other second or third.
Shah has been the frontrunner despite much more institutional support for the three longtime officeholders. He announced his first endorsement from a sitting or former legislator on Thursday. But he is being backed by $768,000 in ad spending from an offshoot of 314 Action Fund, which works to elect Democrats with science backgrounds.
That group attacked Jackson in an ad released Wednesday that focused on anti-abortion votes from early in his tenure representing the socially conservative St. John Valley. A group opposing Shah that is tied to Platner’s allies launched an effort to knock down Shah, who has faced late criticism for a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak he oversaw the response to in Illinois.
The candidates have been releasing final policy plans and touring the state with get-out-the vote events this week. Jackson will attend a Bar Harbor rally Friday night featuring Platner, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-California, and state Auditor Matt Dunlap, who’s fighting among three other Democrats to face former Gov. Paul LePage in a race for the 2nd Congressional District.
Thursday’s poll, which was conducted between May 28 and June 3, suggested Shah had the most support among seniors, a third of whom ranked him first. He also ran strongest among those who call themselves “somewhat liberal,” at 30% first-choice support.
Jackson performed strongest among “very liberal” voters with 34% ranking him first — at least 15 percentage points higher than anyone else. Pingree, who is endorsed by Mills, was the top choice of 27% of the early voters who have already cast a ballot, which was 12% of respondents, SurveyUSA said.
Full results and crosstabs from the poll can be viewed here. It has an error margin of 5.4 percentage points in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. The survey was paid for by FairVote, a group that supports ranked-choice voting. The BDN had input on questions.