Maine has attracted a significant amount of outside polling due to the competitive U.S. Senate race and close presidential race in the 2nd Congressional District. To help keep track of where each race stands, we are compiling all the polls here.
Each pollster uses slightly different methodologies to reach likely voters and estimate how the electorate will be composed. Those factors, combined with random sampling error, lead polls to end up with different results from one another. As a general rule, it is good to not read too much into the results of any one poll but instead consider how each new poll fits in with previous ones.
For these purposes, we are only including polls conducted and paid for by nonpartisan entities. Campaigns and partisan groups also release poll results sometimes. They may be accurate, but they are often released to advance a candidate or group’s interests. Given the plethora of independent polls, we will only be including those and not partisan polls here.
Sara Gideon has held a consistent but narrow polling lead over U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.
Polling in the U.S. Senate race has been relatively consistent this year, with House Speaker Sara Gideon, a Democrat, holding a narrow lead over Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, in independent public polling this year.
The two independents in the race — teacher and former Green Party activist Lisa Savage and businessman Max Linn — have polled in the single digits. The race will use ranked-choice voting, meaning there will be an instant runoff if no candidate finishes with more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.
Joe Biden and President Donald Trump are locked in a close race in the 2nd Congressional District, but Biden has a large lead statewide.
President Donald Trump won the 2nd District, and its singular electoral vote, by 10 points in 2016, the first time since 1988 that any of Maine’s electoral votes had gone to a Republican. The race is much closer this year, with recent polls showing former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, with a slight advantage.
Biden has a larger lead statewide into the double digits in most polls. That stands in contrast to 2016, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won the state by just three points. Three third-party candidates are also on the ballot this year for a race that will — barring a court challenge — use ranked-choice voting, though none of the three have registered significantly in the polls.
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden has a wide lead over challenger Dale Crafts.
U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, narrowly beat an incumbent Republican in the 2nd District in 2018, winning by 1 percentage point after a ranked-choice tally. But polling suggests the race may not be as close in 2020, as Golden has held double-digit leads over his Republican challenger, former state Rep. Dale Crafts.
Golden and Crafts are the only two candidates on the ballot, meaning ranked-choice voting will not play a role this year.
Story by Jessica Piper, Bangor Daily News