I’ve agreed with practically every other commentator that the surprise retirement of Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe would result in a Democratic pickup of her seat. But maybe not. A Public Policy Polling poll shows Democrats generally running better than Republicans, but in a three-way pairing former Governor Angus King leads both Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree and Republican Charlie Summers by a 36%-31%-28% margin. King was elected governor as an Independent in 1994 and 1998, with 35% of the vote in 1994 over former Democratic Governor Joseph Brennan and Republican Susan Collins and with 59% of the vote in 1998. Maine has something of a tradition of electing Independents; James Longley was elected governor as an Independent in 1974, and Eliot Cutler, a onetime aide to Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie, came very close to being elected in 2010, losing 38%-36% to Republican Paul LePage. After the election, Cutler argued that early voting prevented him from winning, because not until the last days of the campaign was it apparent that he was a stronger candidate than Democratic nominee Elizabeth Mitchell. In presidential politics, Maine voted 30% for Ross Perot in 1992, his highest percentage in any state, and he actually beat Maine summer resident George Bush by 316 votes. In 1996 Maine again gave Perot his highest percentage, 14%.
Angus King, like Cutler, seems to be more on the liberal than the conservative side, and by a 51%-25% margin Maine respondents said they’d want him to caucus with Democrats rather than Republicans. But would he commit to doing so? This looks like a very fluid situation. With Cutler as an Independent candidate, Pingree comes out ahead, with 38% to 30% for Summers and 28% for Cutler. But note that in both these three-way races, the spread between the candidates is narrow: 8% with King, 10% with Cutler. Given any poll’s margin of error, that means that no one has a clear lead. The campaign could make a huge difference and lots of things could happen. One candidate could be dropped by voters as unviable, as Democrat Mitchell was in 2010; an Independent could win with a minority of the vote, as in 1974 and 1994; or a Republican could actually win, as LePage did in 2010.
So if there’s a three-way race I give Republicans something more than a zero chance to hold this seat.
