Maine Senate 2026: Collins vs. Jackson After the Reset

Race status as of July 26, 2026. Polling, candidates, and endorsements in this race have changed repeatedly and may change again.

Why this race is on our list

Maine’s Senate race has had three different Democratic frontrunners in ten months and got a new nominee yesterday, 101 days before the election. It also poses a question the rest of the map does not: what happens when a state votes reliably for one party’s presidential candidates and keeps re-electing the other party’s senator. Susan Collins has survived that contradiction five times. Whether it holds a sixth time, against a nominee chosen by convention rather than by voters, is the actual question on the ballot.

Maine: the state behind the race

Maine is the oldest state in the country by median age, at just under 45, and the most rural by share of population. Roughly 1.4 million people live there, making it 43rd in population. Health care is the largest private-sector employer and Bath Iron Works is the largest industrial one. Those facts shape the politics: a large share of residents rely on Medicare and Medicaid, and federal spending decisions land harder here than in a bigger, younger economy.

The state splits its electoral votes by congressional district, and the two districts behave differently. The 1st District, anchored on Portland and the southern coast, votes Democratic. The 2nd District, which covers the northern and inland two thirds of the state, has backed Donald Trump three times. Jared Golden, the Democrat who held the 2nd, is retiring, so that seat is open as well.

Maine has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, and Kamala Harris carried it by about seven points in 2024. Yet the state’s other Senate seat belongs to Angus King, an independent. In 2020 Collins won 50.98 percent to Sara Gideon’s 42.39, a margin of about 8.6 points, in the most expensive race in state history, while Joe Biden carried Maine by more than nine. Maine was the only state that year to elect a senator from a different party than its presidential winner. Any analysis that treats Maine’s presidential lean as predictive has to explain that result first.

Two mechanical notes. Maine uses ranked choice voting for federal races, but reporting on the June signature deadline indicated that no independent candidates qualified for the November Senate ballot, which would make this a two-candidate contest requiring no additional tabulation rounds. Ballotpedia’s candidate list, which it labels unofficial, still shows additional general election names. We flag that conflict rather than resolving it, and readers should treat the ballot as two candidates unless the Secretary of State’s certified list says otherwise.

The candidates

Susan Collins (R), incumbent. Age 73, from Caribou in Aroostook County, now living in Bangor. In the Senate since January 1997, seeking a sixth term. She chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, the first Mainer to chair one of the chamber’s major committees in 92 years, and also sits on the HELP and Intelligence committees. She has never missed a roll call vote, passing 10,000 consecutive votes in June 2026. She voted to convict Trump at his 2021 impeachment trial, against confirming Pete Hegseth as defense secretary and Kash Patel as FBI director, and against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. She also voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and against Amy Coney Barrett. She has raised more than $16 million. In 1996 she pledged to serve no more than two terms.

Troy Jackson (D), challenger. Age 58, from Allagash in Aroostook County, the same county as Collins. A fifth-generation logger and union member who entered politics through a 1998 logging blockade at the Canadian border over wages. He served in the Maine House from 2002, then the Maine Senate, and was Senate president from 2018 to 2024. He ran as a Republican in 2000, became an independent in 2002, and a Democrat in 2004. He ran Bernie Sanders’s first Maine presidential campaign. He placed third in this year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, then entered the Senate race after Graham Platner withdrew. He has raised over $1 million since entering.

Jackson is the nominee because of an unusual sequence. Platner won the June 9 primary with 72 percent of the vote after Governor Janet Mills dropped out, then withdrew in early July following a published allegation of rape by a former girlfriend, which he denied. Maine law gave the state party the power to name a replacement by a Monday deadline 99 days before the election. At a convention in Bangor on July 25, 566 of 571 delegates chose Jackson. Collins’s campaign calls that an appointment rather than a nomination.

What the campaigns are contesting

Collins is running on her Appropriations chairmanship and what it delivers for Maine, and on a claim of independence from the president. Jackson is running on cost of living and on the argument that Collins expresses concern without casting votes to match it. He supports Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, higher taxes on large corporations, universal free school meals, and a federal right to abortion.

Immigration enforcement became the sharpest local issue this month. On July 13 an ICE officer shot and killed Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian food delivery driver, outside his family’s apartment in Biddeford. DHS said the officer feared for public safety as Guerrero tried to drive away, and also confirmed he was not the target of the operation. No body camera footage exists. Protests followed across southern Maine, including one at the Scarborough ICE facility that Jackson attended, and one where demonstrators confronted Collins over her committee’s role in funding the agency. Collins had backed an immigration enforcement funding package that Trump signed on June 10, and the Portland Press Herald has reported on her fight with the administration over spending control alongside criticism from constituents over that vote.

There is one documented split between the candidates’ framing and voters’ assessments. The University of New Hampshire’s July survey found Collins earns high marks from Mainers for bringing federal dollars to the state, which is her central argument, and lower marks for her votes on legislation, Cabinet nominees, and Supreme Court justices, which is her opponent’s central argument. Both campaigns are, in that sense, running on accurate readings of the same electorate.

Evidence check

Not a full fact check. Six recurring campaign claims, three per candidate, with context and sources.

“Collins voted with Trump 96 percent of the time.” The Maine Democratic Party has used this figure repeatedly, and has also used 94 percent. Published estimates of Collins’s Trump alignment vary widely depending on which votes are counted and over what period: FiveThirtyEight put her first-term figure at 67 percent, while material circulated by the state party cites 90 percent for the first term and 95 percent for 2025. We could not verify the denominator behind the 96 percent figure, and we note the conflict rather than picking one number. What is documented is that she opposed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Hegseth and Patel nominations, and voted to convict Trump in 2021.

“Collins paved the way for overturning Roe.” Partly supported, and more complicated than either side presents it. She voted to confirm Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, both of whom joined the Dobbs majority, which is the factual core of the charge. She voted against Barrett, has consistently described herself as supporting abortion rights, has backed bipartisan bills to codify Roe, and called the Dobbs decision ill-considered. Whether confirmation votes make a senator responsible for a later ruling is a judgment, not a fact.

“Collins has secured nearly $1.5 billion for Maine since 2021.” This is the campaign’s own figure, published on its track record page, and it refers to congressionally directed spending across 670 projects in all 16 counties. Individual directed-spending items are published in appropriations bills, so the underlying projects are verifiable, but we did not independently confirm the total. Worth knowing on both sides: congressionally directed spending is the current name for earmarks, a practice many fiscal conservatives oppose on principle, so the same figure functions as an accomplishment in Maine and as a criticism elsewhere in her party.

“Jackson was appointed by fewer than three-tenths of one percent of primary voters.” Collins’s campaign said this after the convention. The arithmetic is roughly right and the framing is contested. 571 delegates voted, against a Democratic primary electorate that was far larger. Delegates were elected at county meetings the previous weekend, and the process is the one Maine law prescribes for replacing a nominee. Whether a legally prescribed party process counts as an appointment is the disagreement, not the number.

“Jackson has always been pro-choice.” Not supported. Candidate questionnaires reviewed by CNN show that in 2010 Jackson selected the option stating abortion should never be legal and endorsed a mandatory ultrasound requirement. He voted for a fetal personhood bill in 2011 and for counseling requirements in 2013. His position reversed: he now holds a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood’s Maine chapter, co-sponsored the 2023 law that made Maine the first state after Dobbs to expand abortion access later in pregnancy, and told the Bangor Daily News plainly that he had been wrong. Both the old record and the reversal are real.

“Jackson has a temperament problem.” Partly documented, and the sourcing has limits worth naming. CNN and the Washington Post interviewed former colleagues who described shouting, cursing, and a 2021 incident in which Jackson threw a plastic water bottle during an argument over prescription drug pricing, plus a 2024 clash with then-House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross over a red flag bill. His campaign acknowledged the outbursts as moments when frustration got the better of him, disputed some details, and disputed that they were aimed at women. Many sources were anonymous, citing fear of retaliation. CNN noted he has not been accused of physical abuse or criminal wrongdoing, and his critics drew a distinction between his conduct and the allegations that ended Platner’s campaign.

What supporters are saying

A note on balance in this section. The Bangor convention produced a large volume of on-the-record Democratic voter comment this weekend because hundreds of Democrats gathered in one room with reporters present. No comparable Republican event occurred, so independently reported comment from Collins voters is thinner at the moment. We would rather say that than fill the gap with unverifiable social media posts.

Jackson supporters. Several delegates framed their support as being about Collins rather than about Jackson. One alternate delegate told CNN her bottom line was keeping Collins out of the Senate, regardless of who the party had initially preferred. A York delegate noted that both Collins and Jackson come from Aroostook County and treated that shared origin as an asset. A delegate from Calais who had volunteered for Platner and wore a Platner shirt to the convention told Maine Morning Star he became a delegate to continue what that campaign started, and said what held him was the detailed policy rather than the viral video. A progressive organizer who publicly condemned Platner told CNN she has no concerns about Jackson’s temperament and draws no comparison between the two men. A former Democratic lawmaker who once argued heatedly with Jackson told the Washington Post she supports him anyway.

Collins supporters. The clearest independent evidence is in the polling rather than in interviews. The July UNH survey found 99 percent of Maine Republicans backing Collins against Jackson, and Collins scoring well with Mainers generally on delivering federal money. That sits alongside a more awkward finding from 2025 UNH polling, in which a majority of Maine Republicans said she did not deserve re-election. Both can be true at once: consolidated support against a specific opponent does not require enthusiasm. Organized support is also documented. In June her campaign announced a statewide veterans coalition chaired by retired Chief Master Sergeant Kelly Hoffses and state Senator Brad Farrin, with two retired Maine adjutants general as honorary chairs. Her campaign site publishes testimonials from named Maine residents praising her work ethic and cross-party record, though campaign-published testimonials are not the same thing as independent reporting, and we do not treat them as equivalent.

How this race is being framed

National and local coverage are emphasizing different things, and the difference is not subtle.

National outlets are largely covering the seat as arithmetic. Republicans hold the Senate 53 to 47, Democrats need four seats, and Fox News Power Rankings list Maine as a toss-up alongside Alaska, Iowa, and Ohio. In that frame the candidates matter mainly as instruments, and the recurring question is whether the swap from Platner to Jackson raised or lowered Democrats’ odds. Republican strategists have argued both that the race resets without Platner and that Jackson can be tied to him.

Maine outlets have covered the same weekend as a story about the state party and the state’s political culture. The Boston Globe noted that Platner went unmentioned during the two and a half hour convention despite having won 72 percent of the primary vote weeks earlier. Local reporting has focused on whether a 24-year statehouse veteran can inherit an insurgent movement built on being an outsider, and on the practical problem that the Senate drama has crowded out coverage of the open 2nd District and the governor’s race.

The two framings also disagree about the polling. The July UNH poll gives Jackson 49 percent to Collins’s 46, with a margin of error of about 2.8 points, and independents splitting 46 to 42 for Jackson. Collins’s campaign has publicly dismissed UNH’s online polls as unreliable. Two further cautions apply regardless of that dispute: the poll closed on July 20, before the temper reporting and before the abortion questionnaires surfaced, and Collins has now twice outrun polls that showed her losing.

Discussion Questions

Maine has voted for Democratic presidential candidates since 1992 and re-elected Susan Collins five times. What explains that, and does it still hold?
Maine law let a party convention of 571 delegates choose a nominee after the primary winner withdrew. Is that a reasonable process, and what would a better one look like?
Collins argues that seniority and an Appropriations chairmanship are worth more to Maine than a vote that matches the state’s politics. How much is that worth to you, in practice?
Directed federal spending is an accomplishment in the state that receives it and a target for criticism elsewhere. Which view do you hold, and does it change depending on who benefits?
Jackson’s position on abortion reversed completely over twenty years. When does a changed position deserve credit, and when does it deserve suspicion?
Reporting on Jackson’s temper relied largely on anonymous sources who cited fear of retaliation. What weight should anonymous accounts carry in an election?
Collins voted to confirm two of the justices who overturned Roe while saying she supports abortion rights. Is a confirmation vote a vote on future rulings?
National coverage treats this seat mainly as a number in the Senate majority. What does that framing miss about Maine, and does it matter to how you vote?
The killing of Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford put immigration enforcement at the center of a statewide race. What should a senator’s role be in overseeing a federal agency operating in their state?
If your preferred candidate loses, what would you want the winner to do first?