July 24 2026 - 6:00pm
Troy Jackson is as close as Maine Democrats can get to nominating a blank slate in the stead of Graham Platner, who withdrew from the Senate race earlier this month amid allegations of sexual assault. Whether that’s good or bad will mostly depend on incumbent GOP senator Susan Collins.
Jackson, a logger and local politico, received great news from a University of New Hampshire poll published on Tuesday. Heading into Saturday’s nomination convention, he is the clear favorite among Democratic primary voters in Maine. Even better, he is apparently neck-and-neck with Collins. Among likely general election voters, UNH found Jackson at 49% to Collins’s 46%, which puts him in a lead just outside the poll’s margin of error. A tiny 3% of likely voters said they were undecided.
Should he clear the nominating hurdle on Saturday, that’s the narrow group of voters over whom Jackson and Collins will fight bitterly until November. Collins will have to answer for the economy, tariffs, and Donald Trump’s Iran war, while Jackson will have to defend his support for hard-Left Democrats such as Bernie Sanders and Platner. Jackson has also faced reports of a volatile temper this week, including a bizarre anecdote about throwing a water bottle in anger, which could push undecided independents toward Collins.
When I asked a GOP strategist about Jackson, they previewed Republicans’ argument. “Angry, abusive towards women, and a socialist: the perfect replacement for Graham Platner,” they said. “While he doesn’t have a Nazi tattoo, he also appears to lack charisma and any actual voters.”
But that argument loses some of its force if the Republican President is presiding over high gas prices, a shaky economy and an ongoing war. Even so, the UNH poll points to a potential vulnerability for Collins: the election is likely to be decided by independents. Among that group, Collins enjoys a 53% favorability rating, compared with just 32% for Jackson, while 13% say they do not know enough about him to form an opinion.
That unfamiliarity could prove either Jackson’s greatest asset or his greatest liability. If Republicans succeed in defining him first as a radical progressive, it may be enough to carry Collins over the line. If, meanwhile, Jackson fails to establish a compelling identity of his own and instead comes across as little more than a stand-in for the more charismatic Platner, he risks depressing Democratic enthusiasm while alienating swing voters. It would also give Collins ample room to define him herself, tying him to the excesses of the progressive Left.
Collins, by default, will be tethered to a status quo with which voters in Maine are not happy. For that tiny group of independent-minded swing voters, Jackson just needs to look like an alternative worth trying. Should gas prices spike even higher once again, that case will be much easier for him to make.
Democrats would be unwise to forget 2020. Every single major poll found that Sara Gideon, one of the cycle’s most high-profile candidates, held a lead over Collins. A September Quinnipiac poll put her up by 12. When all the ballots were counted, Collins managed to hang onto her seat not by a thread but by a staggering 8.6 points. Gideon had more than triple the money — $74 million to Collins’ $27 million. It couldn’t even bring her within five points of Collins, in a year when Trump lost the presidency.
Gideon came the closest to unseating Collins since she was elected to the Senate in 1996. Perhaps Jackson will eat away at Collins’s comfortable margins of victory. But, for whatever reason, the Maine senator has proven to be Democrats’ kryptonite.
