Maine Senate race results are trickling in. Will Susan Collins hold on?
Sen. Susan Collins greets supporter Betsey (cq) McCandless of Portland during a watch party at Hilton Garden Inn in Bangor. (Staff photo by Derek Davis)
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Polls have closed and election clerks in hundreds of Maine towns have begun counting the ballots to determine whether Republican Sen. Susan Collins will return to Washington, D.C. for a sixth term.
Most polls showed her opponent, Democrat Troy Jackson, a 58-year-old former logger and former president of the Maine State Senate, ahead in the run-up to Election Day, but the race is likely to be close. As of about 11:50 p.m., 56% of the vote had been counted, and Jackson had opened up a modest lead.
In perhaps an auspicious sign for the Democrat, Jackson looked to have won the city of Auburn — a city Collins carried in her last election by eight points.
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Collins also appeared to be carrying the vote in many rural towns — but by slimmer margins than her last election.
Collins won the town of Hiram, for example, by nearly 30% in 2020. This year, she won by 13.6%. In the Kennebec County town of Rome, Collins defeated Sara Gideon by 21 points in 2020. This year, she won by 2%.
As of about 11:15, many southern Maine towns that were expected to go overwhelmingly for Jackson had not reported any results.
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If Jackson were to win, it would represent the end of an era in Maine and national politics. Collins is the lone surviving New England Republican left in Congress.
The race was one of the most closely watched in the country, drawing record spending. Because Collins was the only Senate Republican running in a state won by Democrats in 2024, Democrats viewed the seat as a prime pickup opportunity to take control of the upper chamber. And both parties spent big.
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More than $284 million was poured into campaign ads, according to the tracking firm AdImpact. Republicans-aligned groups outspent Democrats by more than $46 million.
It was also one of the most chaotic races in the country, with Democrats having to change candidates in the middle of summer.
A CHAOTIC DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
The cycle started two summers ago when Graham Platner, an oyster farmer from the small town of Sullivan, burst onto the scene.
Buoyed by early national press and support from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Platner cruised to win the Democratic primary in June, weathering numerous controversies about his past. He defeated two-term Gov. Janet Mills, driving her from the race more than a month before the primary
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But Platner dropped out of the race only weeks later, after a former romantic partner accused him of sexual assault. He denied the allegation, but quickly lost his political support.
Democrats were left scrambling, and they chose Jackson as their new nominee at a special statewide convention. Jackson, who had run unsuccessfully for governor in June, was strongly supported by labor unions, which quickly organized on his behalf.
COLLINS TRIES TO HOLD ON
Jackson had about 100 days to build a Senate campaign against Collins, a savvy politician who has held office since 1997.
Over the last 30 years, she climbed the ranks in Washington to take the reigns of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, a perch that allowed her to steer $1.5 billion in federal earmarks to projects in Maine in recent years.
Democrats thought they had her on the ropes during her last campaign in 2020, but she won by nine points despite trailing in most public polling leading up to the election.
But over the last six years, the effects of Collins’ vote in support of appointing Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court became a clear liability, especially among women. In 2022, the Supreme Court voted to overturn national abortion protections under Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh sided with the majority despite Collins’ claims that he told her the case was settled law.
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Collins stood by her vote for Kavanaugh during the campaign, saying she didn’t regret it. But Democrats hammered her for it throughout the year and continued to accuse her of enabling Trump, whose approval rating here and across the country plummeted ahead of the election.
Throughout the general election campaign, Collins tried to localize the race by making it about delivering federal resources to Maine, while Jackson sought to nationalize it by making it a referendum on Trump and Collins.
CANDIDATES LAUNCH ATTACKS
The contest turned increasingly bitter in the final days. Collins and her allies ran ads highlighting Jackson’s long-term romantic relationship with his second cousin, and played up his son’s role as a lobbyist while he was Maine Senate president.
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One Collins surrogate, the former TV personality Bill Green, said that Jackson, a former logger, didn’t have “the tools” to navigate the Senate in a television ad — one that was quickly panned by Democrats as elitist and out-of-touch as Mainers faced record-high home heating fuel prices.
A Democratic-aligned group, meanwhile, accused Collins of trying to cover up the crimes of disgraced financier and convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. They also accused her of corruption and for playing the stock market for personal gain, while supporting policies that hurt working Mainers.
This is a developing story.
Staff writer Dylan Tusinski contributed reporting.
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Tagged: election 2026, Registration, senate 2026, Susan Collins, Troy Jackson
Randy Billings is a government watchdog and political reporter who has been the State House bureau chief since 2021. He was named the Maine Press Association’s Journalist of the Year in 2020. He joined. More by Randy Billings
