Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is facing an uphill climb to retain her seat, which has gone virtually uncontested since she was first elected in 1996, and has been slammed from both the Left and the Right for toeing a line that seems to have pleased no one.
In a 2016 editorial, Collins called President Trump “unworthy of being our president,” declaring that she would not be voting for him. She was one of several Republican senators who tried to stop Trump from ousting Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland earlier this month, according to reports, and she has publicly chastised Trump, including for remarks calling on China to investigate political rival former Vice President Joe Biden.
But Collins’s stance on Trump’s impeachment, in which she voted to acquit him even as she called for more witnesses, was damaging to her support, especially with independents, who make up roughly 40% of her state’s electorate.
A new poll shows Collins, a historically popular senator last reelected with 67% of the vote, in a statistical dead heat against the leading Democratic front-runner, Sara Gideon, the current speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. Forty-two percent of respondents said they would vote for Collins, while 43% said they would vote for her leading Democratic rival in the results published on Tuesday by Colby College. Collins outperformed an unnamed Democrat other than Gideon on the ballot, however, at 40% to 34%.
Fifty-four percent of respondents rated Collins unfavorably, a sharp rise since Trump took office. Among independents, Collins’s unfavorable rating was still higher, at 57%.
Thirty-seven percent of respondents said that Maine should be disappointed in her role in the president’s impeachment.
Dan Shea, Colby College professor of government and the lead researcher on the poll, said, “The results indicate this could be the kind of race Sen. Collins has not had to deal with before.”
In 2015, Morning Consult recorded a 78% approval rating for Collins, the highest of any Republican senator and second only to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democrat. This nearly halved by January 2020, to 42%.
Colby College surveyed 1,008 registered voters between Feb. 10 and 13. The poll has a margin of error of 3%.
