TOPSHAM, Maine — In 2014, Republican Sen. Susan Collins won 39 percent of Maine’s Democratic voters, according to exit polls. In 2020, she got 13%, enough to keep her seat in a state that President Donald Trump lost the same year. This week, a Suffolk University poll put his support among Democrats at just 5 percent.
Outside of early voting sites last week, some of the Democratic-leaning voters who once supported Collins said they now support the Democrat in the race, former state Sen. Troy Jackson.
Barbara Swartzlander, a Democrat, voted for Collins in 2020. This year, she voted for Jackson in Scarborough, one of several Portland suburbs where Collins significantly outperformed Trump in 2020.
Jackson would “bring a new energy,” Swartzlander told MS NOW. She said she was “a little unhappy about the overturning of Roe v. Wade” and criticized Collins for voting to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh joined the majority in the 2022 Dobbs decision ending the constitutional right to abortion.
Scott Burns, a voter in his mid-75s, said he had supported Collins “many times,” including in 2020. But outside a polling station in Topsham, he said he would likely support Jackson this year because he didn’t think Collins had done enough to rein in the president.
“I don’t like what’s happening in government and I don’t see any way to continue to empower the president,” Burns said.
Collins, who is seeking a sixth term, is fighting for his political life amid deep frustration with Trump and the Republican Party — and what some voters see as his unwillingness to oppose the president’s unpopular policies. That frustration threatens her hold on the crossover voters who have long kept her in power in a state that is reliable in presidential elections.
Finding a Mainer who has voted for Collins at least once in his 30-year career isn’t difficult: In a recent Washington Post poll, 70 percent of voters said so.
The question this year is how many of them will do it again.
Rick Crawford, a Topsham Democrat, said he supported Collins in “most elections.” But this year, he said, “because of the situation with our president, I’m going the opposite way.”
Collins has long maintained a reputation for staying above the political fray, touting the federal money she brought to Maine as chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and highlighting times she broke with Trump.
In two debates last week, Collins spoke about her opposition to the president on the war with Iran and the tariffs he has imposed on Canadian exports, and she will have another chance to do so in the fourth and final debate Thursday night.
Some of his former supporters no longer believe it.
“She’s doing what’s for her and not for the people of Maine,” said Debbie Conley of Gorham, an independent voter who previously voted for Collins but is undecided this year. “I love that she’s never missed a vote, but I think it’s time for a change.”
That’s not to say voters are enamored with Jackson, a gruff and unpolished former lumberjack from northern Maine. Even voters who support Jackson described him to MS NOW as “lukewarm,” “not particularly” strong and “lacking what it takes.”
“There were only two choices,” Swartzlander admitted, explaining his vote.
Bev Uhlenhake, a lobbyist and former chair of the Maine Democratic Party, said that’s typical of a Collins race.
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