ME-SEN: Democrats Found A Major Recruit To Take On Susan Collins in 2020
If Maine continues to go blue in 2020, Collins is likely to be in real danger. While the state is not overwhelmingly Democratic, it has consistently voted for the party’s presidential candidate in every race going back to 1992. And nowadays, states usually back the same party for president and Senate.
Collins is also a more polarizing figure now than she once was, especially after her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last year. While Collins has built a moderate profile with one of the most centrist voting records in the Senate, her support for Kavanaugh shifted views of her job performance along partisan lines, with sharp increases in approval among Republicans and, conversely, disapproval among Democrats. The former makes it less likely that Collins will get a primary challenge, but the latter suggests Collins could be in trouble in a general election. Gideon’s introductory video specifically referenced the vote, saying it put women’s health choices in “extreme jeopardy.”
While Gideon’s entry probably makes her the leading Democratic Senate candidate, she will have to get through a primary. Betsy Sweet, a progressive who finished third in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, is already running, and others could join, such as Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap. In Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, a large number of competitive candidates could create unpredictable scenarios for winning the party’s nomination. Still, Gideon has had a strong start, receiving endorsements from major Democratic groups, including EMILY’s List, a group that works to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, as well as NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the party’s Senate campaign arm.
But even if Gideon wins the primary, Collins will be a formidable opponent. In March, the first — and so far only — poll testing the Collins-Gideon matchup found Collins leading 51 percent to 29 percent. Gideon’s position will almost certainly improve now that she’s actually in the race — 41 percent had no opinion of her in that survey — but the early gap shows why it’s so hard to challenge an incumbent. Collins has seen her approval slide in recent years, going from 67 percent in early 2017 to 52 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to Morning Consult, but her standing is much better than Maine’s partisan lean would predict.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-found-a-major-recruit-to-take-on-susan-collins-in-2020/?ex_cid=538twitter
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