Battleground Maine?
Yes! How Did This Happen?
An amazing thing is happening in American politics this year: Maine is becoming the key battleground state in the 2026 election. Yes, Maine, with its puny four electoral votes, teetering on the out-of-the-way northeast edge of the United States as if it might as well be part of Canada, remote geographically and demographically from mainstream America. (It has the oldest population of any state, older even than Florida with its army of seniors.)
Why is this happening?
The toughest choice in an election is often not which candidate to support but whether your vote should be driven by the candidates or by the issues. That’s the choice facing voters in Maine this year. The biggest issue in the 2026 midterm is Donald Trump, who’s not running for anything. The midterm gives anti-Trump voters an opportunity to offer exactly what the Constitution provides: a check and balance on presidential authority. If Americans elect a Democratic House of Representatives and Senate, the new Congress will have the authority to deny Trump the ability to get whatever he wants from government, whether it’s imposing new tariffs on imported foreign goods or a gold-encrusted monumental arch greeting visitors entering the capital city.
Those issues will come to a head in Maine this fall, specifically in the Maine Senate race where the Republican incumbent, Sen. Susan Collins, is running for a sixth term in office. Her Democratic opponent, Graham Platner, is a self-styled populist who is trying to make the Maine Senate race a referendum on Donald Trump. On primary day, Platner confronted Collins asking, ``How can she claim to be an independent voice when she votes with Donald Trump 95 percent of the time?’’
Platner has a good reason to say that. In a University of Massachusetts Lowell/YouGov survey of likely Maine voters taken in May, only 38 percent of the state’s likely voters said they had a favorable opinion of President Trump. 59 percent had an unfavorable opinion of Trump, including 95 percent of Democrats. It worked. Platner took 72 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Only 19 percent voted for Gov. Janet Mills (D), who had suspended her campaign six weeks earlier.
The primary really amounted to a test of how much damage Platner is suffering with his own party as a result of negative stories about his personal behavior. If Platner wins in November, the clear answer will be, ``Not much.’’ Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith put it this way: ``Democrats want to win.’’ Implying that Democrats will do whatever it takes to stop Trump. Even nominating a candidate like Platner who makes a lot of voters uncomfortable. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) put the primary results this way: ``[Platner] won the nomination. That was the decision of Maine voters. And I respect that decision.’’
Trump supporters like to say that the Democratic Party today has fallen under the control of what they call ``awfuls.’’ It’s their nasty acronym for ``affluent white female urban liberals’’ – women like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton and Renee Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota in January. Women like that are supposed to have little tolerance for men like Platner, who is dogged by controversies over his past abusive treatment of women (including physically threatening behavior).
Platner has apologized for his past behavior and offers himself to Maine voters as a changed man. He said to his supporters on primary night, ``If you believe as I do, that we can change our politics and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change. And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it.’’
Well, he once had a Nazi tattoo – the totenkopf or death’s head image associated with the elite Nazi SS units and with some white supremacist groups. He has since had it removed.
Democrats have endured a significant loss of support among white working-class voters (generally taken to mean the non-college educated), and some party strategists see Platner as the answer to their prayers. He enlisted in the Marines after high school and served three combat tours in Iraq. He works as an oyster fisherman – a very blue-collar (and Maine) occupation. He was not born to great wealth or privilege, though he attended prep school and enrolled in college without getting a degree. His mother runs an upscale restaurant to which her son sells oysters. Platner calls himself a progressive populist and is highly critical of the political establishment and the billionaire class. He is running with the enthusiastic endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the progressive icon.
New England was once the homeland of moderate and even liberal Republicans. Several of them bore the cherished name ``Lincoln’’ – among them, former Governors of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee and Lincoln Almond. That tradition survives today in the last remaining Republican elected to Congress from New England – Sen. Susan Collins. New England has trended steadily liberal in recent years as the Republican party has become solidly conservative. In the last three presidential elections, Donald Trump has not carried any New England state.
As a Maine Republican, Platner cannot find Trumpism totally alien. Maine is one of two states that awards an electoral vote to the presidential candidate who carries each of the state’s congressional districts (the other state is Nebraska). Trump has carried Maine’s Second Congressional District three times. The Second District is heavily rural and probably includes more moose than voters. Like most rural areas of the U.S., backwoods Maine is Trump country.
Maine has elected, and re-elected, a very Trump-like Republican governor, Paul LePage (serving from 2011 to 2019). When Gov. LePage endorsed Trump in 2026, he said, ``I was Donald Trump before Trump became popular.’’ Former Gov. LePage is now running for Congress from Maine’s Second Congressional District.
Part of Sen. Collins’ appeal is that, in an era of intense political polarization, she may be the last true moderate in Congress. A veteran Republican strategist called her ``the best cross-party appeal candidate Republicans have fielded anywhere in the last ten years.’’
There is one wild card in the 2026 Maine Senate race: the abortion issue. Justice Brett Kavanaugh very likely cast the deciding vote in the 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Court’s 1973 decision that gave constitutionally protected status to abortion rights. When Kavanaugh, who was named to the Court by President Trump, was up for Senate confirmation in 2018, Sen. Collins famously said that that he told her that he considered Roe v. Wade ``settled law.’’ She voted to confirm him and he voted with the majority to overturn Roe.
A Democratic strategist told NBC News that Maine is the only battleground state where ads supporting abortion rights are likely to affect the vote. Three quarters of Maine voters polled last month by the University of Massachusetts and YouGov endorsed the view that women should have the right to get an abortion in every state.
If Platner loses, the Maine Senate election will be widely interpreted as a personal defeat for a flawed candidate. If Collins loses, the Maine Senate election will be widely interpreted as a defeat for President Trump. But resentment of Sen. Collins’ role in the loss of abortion rights will likely have been a key factor turning the state against her after five terms in office.