Maine Senate Race: Troy Jackson Leads Susan Collins Into the Final Days
On Tuesday, 3 November, voters in Maine will decide one of the closest and most consequential races of the 2026 midterms: whether five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins keeps her seat, or whether Democrat Troy Jackson takes it. The stakes go well beyond Maine. Republicans currently hold the Senate 53-45, with two independents, so Democrats need a net gain of four seats to win control. Maine is one of only a handful of seats rated a genuine toss-up, and both parties have treated it as a must-win.
The polls point the same way, but not by much. The 270toWin average of five recent polls puts Jackson ahead 49.2 percent to 45.6 percent. The two latest surveys are a little wider: Data for Progress, fielded 30 October among 652 likely voters, has Jackson up 50-45, and CNN/SSRS, fielded 29 October among 783 likely voters, has him up 49-45. Yet the lead is fragile. Marist, fielded 22-25 October, had Jackson ahead by only two points, 49-47, and two other October polls had the race tied outright: Trafalgar at 47-47 and Fox News at 49-49. Several of these leads sit inside the polls' margins of error, which is why the race remains a toss-up in the Cook Political Report's rating, even as Sabato's Crystal Ball leans it Democratic.
Jackson's advantage is clearest among the voters who usually decide Maine elections. In the Marist poll, he led Collins 50-41 among independents who are likely to vote, and on the generic congressional ballot question, likely voters in Maine backed the Democrat 52-47. Jackson entered the race in late July, after Graham Platner withdrew, and he has led in nearly every independent poll since, even if the margins have bounced between a tie and a few points. The national environment is plainly helping him: this is a midterm with a deeply unpopular president's party defending seats, and Maine's voters have been moving in the Democrats' direction on the ballot question all autumn.
Collins's case rests on incumbency, and it is stronger than a two- or three-point polling deficit suggests. She chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, a position that lets her argue, credibly, that Maine loses influence if she loses. More importantly, she has beaten the polls before: in 2020 she trailed in September polling and still won re-election, a result Maine political watchers still cite as a warning against writing her off. Marist captured the same tension in its latest survey. While likely voters backed Jackson 49-47, 58 percent of them said they expected Collins to be re-elected anyway. Voters can intend to vote one way and still believe the incumbent's record of survival will prevail, and that gap between intention and expectation is the most interesting number in this race.
The prediction markets are more confident in Jackson than the polls are. On 1 November, Polymarket's "Maine Senate Election Winner" market priced Jackson at 69 percent and Collins at 32 percent, on $3.1 million traded since the market opened in October 2025. That is a wider margin than a 3.6-point polling average would normally imply, and it is worth pausing on. Markets aggregate money, not votes, and they can run ahead of the polling evidence when the national mood is strong. The polls say Jackson is ahead; they do not say he is ahead by enough to be safe.
So the honest reading is that Jackson is the favourite, not the winner-in-waiting. A lead in every recent poll, a lead among independents, a favourable national environment and a market price near 70 percent all point the same way. Against that stands a five-term incumbent with a history of outperforming her polls, a tied race in two October surveys, and a majority of Maine voters who, even now, expect her to survive. Tuesday will settle which of those two stories was the real one, and the answer will go a long way toward deciding who controls the Senate.