ME-SEN: Collins' allies think Platner's exit makes her reelection bid tougher
Republicans may be publicly using Graham Platner’s exit from Maine’s Senate race to ratchet up their attacks on Democrats, but behind the scenes, his withdrawal is hardly being viewed as good news for Sen. Susan Collins’ reelection campaign.
According to a person familiar with the campaign’s thinking, granted anonymity to discuss it, Collins’ team had long viewed Platner as a uniquely vulnerable opponent whose personal controversies could help offset one of the biggest challenges she faces in 2026: running as a blue-state Republican in the Trump era.
“She can certainly win, but they didn’t want to change candidates,” the person familiar with the campaign’s thinking said. “The stuff we already knew about Platner was going to propel Collins to overcome the Trump anchor. Now it’s going to be a Democrat with a cleaner record, presumably.”
Collins’ campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, and it has not weighed in publicly since Platner announced the suspension of his campaign.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/07/08/congress/susan-collins-graham-platner-exit-00991434
= new reply since forum marked as read
I firmly believe a new nominee chosen in an open process (e.g., statewide caucuses or popup convention) will be a STRONGER candidate.
And the data backs up the assertion.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/some-thoughts-on-whats-next-for-maine
We are going to spend some time with data now.
Over the last several months prior to the June primary Platner led Collins by an average of 7 points over Susan Collins. This is exactly the margin Harris won Maine by in 2024, 4 points below the +11 generic ballot the NYT published last week, and at least 8 points below our gubernatorial candidate, Hannah Pingree. I will once again share that recent chart of how our battleground Senate candidates are doing relative to Harris. This uses the NYT results for Platner from last week:
The Fox News poll last week had Platner trailing Susan Collins by 3. What this all means is that Platner has had the worst polling of any of our battleground candidates in the country this summer in what is by far and away the most Democratic state we are competing in this year.
...
The +15 is where Hannah Pingree, a well-established Democrat in Maine, is right now. Last week Platner was +2 in the NYT poll, and -3 in the Fox News poll.
G. Elliott Morris published an analysis last night that makes some of these same points...
Let’s now look at a bit more data from this new analysis from Morris. The number on the right column is the number of percentage points our candidates are over/underperforming against expectations right now in their nowcast model:
Talarico 5.4
Cooper 4.5
Brown 4.2
Turek 3.7
Michigan -5.9 (both El-Sayed and Haley Stevens)
Platner - 9.9
While Ossoff and Peltola are not included in Morris’ analysis they would fall into the overperformance camp, not the underperformance camp based on publicly available polling data of late.
....
