Graham Platner Isn’t Just Surviving. He’s Leading.
After nearly two months of post-Thanksgiving semi-hibernation, Maine’s Senate race is waking up. Although Democratic primary voters won’t head to the polls until June to decide who will take on longtime GOP incumbent Susan Collins, Graham Platner, the progressive populist oyster farmer, resumed the town hall meetings that made him a sensation last summer and fall, while the state’s governor, the establishment-backed Janet Mills, has begun more actively campaigning than she had at any point last year.
In October, the primary seemed like it was over just as it was beginning. Platner was buried then in a wave of opposition research, namely involving revelations of his racist and sexist Reddit posts and a tattoo he had unknowingly gotten of a Nazi symbol. How could he possibly take down a popular sitting governor now? But the outsider candidate has remained remarkably resilient: He has continued to lead in many polls.
Mills, meanwhile, has to run a different campaign than she and her allies—including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is backing her—probably thought necessary when the oppo started raining down in the fall. While Platner has survived his scandals without seemingly losing much, if any, support, Mills is now running from behind and has to answer deep, lingering concerns about her age—78—and ties to a Democratic establishment many voters view with suspicion.
Not only that, but Mills has to deal with Collins, who is back to her old tricks. Last week, the senator announced that she had struck a deal with the Trump administration for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials—then busily raiding immigrant communities throughout Maine—to leave the state and halt “Operation Catch of the Day.” It was a classic maneuver from Collins, who has spent most of the last decade in an elaborate dance with Trump, sometimes pulling close and sometimes pushing away. And the implied message was hardly subtle: Collins was telling voters that she—not Platner or Mills—could dictate just how badly the Trump administration would affect their lives.
Mills in particular is vulnerable to that message. As governor, her strongest argument against both Platner and Collins is that she has the experience to handle whatever the administration will throw at the state for the final two years of Trump’s term. (Mills, given her age, isn’t expected to serve a second term, though who knows—she would hardly be the first Democratic senator to remain in office into their eighties.) But the race has not gone according to script. Indeed, there are signs that her experience is a negative for many voters: It makes her the representative of a political establishment that many in the state distrust.
It’s easy to see why Mills was pushed into the race. She’s reasonably popular, has high name recognition, and has polled fairly well in head-to-head races against Collins in the past. But her campaign has not gotten off to the start that many intended. Mills announced her candidacy on October 14. Three days later, stories started emerging about Platner’s Reddit history, which included posts in which he said Black people were bad tippers, called “all” cops “bastards,” and said victims of sexual assault and rape should “take some responsibility for themselves.” On October 21, Platner revealed—perhaps getting ahead of more opposition research—that he had unknowingly gotten a “Totenkopf,” a Nazi symbol, tattooed on his chest decades earlier. (A few days later, Platner had the tattoo covered with a new tattoo.)
There was clearly a hope among establishment Democrats that Platner would drop out of the race, leaving Mills as the only viable contender. But Platner didn’t duck the accusations; he apologized and addressed them head-on both in the media and in several well-attended town halls throughout the state. It seems to have worked: Platner, in most polls, shows a slight advantage over Mills and in some surveys is much higher.
One of those surveys, conducted by Z to A Research between November 14 and 18, found that both candidates had a one-point advantage in a head-to-head race against Collins: 46 to 45 percent, with 7 percent unsure and 2 percent saying they had no plan to vote. The only difference is in the undecideds: For Platner, 7 percent are unsure and 2 percent say they had no plan to vote; for Mills, those figures are 5 percent and 3 percent, respectively. That figure is good news for Platner: One of Mills’s most important arguments to voters is that she is the more “electable candidate.” There’s little reason, either from this poll or several others, to suggest she has a huge advantage there.
Of course, it may not matter. The same poll—funded by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has endorsed Platner—found that he had a shocking 20-point lead over Mills, with 55 percent of voters saying they “strongly supported” his candidacy. Only 32 percent said the same about Mills. The same poll found that, though Platner is less well known than Mills, he’s better liked—and that voters seem to like him more the more they get to know him. His favorable numbers are roughly comparable to Mills’s—he is +48 with Democratic primary voters, and Mills is +49—but far fewer voters know him: 22 percent have “no opinion” about him compared to just 12 percent with Mills. Perhaps more surprisingly, 22 percent of Maine voters surveyed have an unfavorable opinion of the current governor and only 15 percent feel the same about the embattled oyster farmer.
No surveys of Maine’s Senate race have taken place in 2026, which is understandable given that very little has happened in that election this year. Polling in the wake of the wave of scandals that engulfed Platner’s campaign in the fall tells a muddled story. Surveys from November onward suggest anything from a Platner landslide to a slight Mills lead (SoCal Strategies had Mills up five points in late October), to a commanding one (PanAtlantic Strategies has Mills with a 10-point lead shortly after Thanksgiving). But a memo put together by the Progressive Campaign Change Committee and obtained by The New Republic argues that other recent Platner polls have methodological flaws, such as failing to weight for a likely primary electorate, the poll’s sample size, and the use of paid respondents. A widely circulated Emily’s List poll, which showed that Platner would lose to Collins, didn’t include any screening information about Mills—whom Emily’s List had endorsed.
“All credible polls show that Graham Platner is crushing in the primary and on equal ground in the general—with more room to grow against Collins than Mills,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “For those concerned about negative attacks against Democrats, it’s clear that Mills’ veto of a wealth tax, pro-worker legislation, and mandatory rape kit testing is a political anchor in both the primary and general because it hurts the lives of voters in a kitchen-table way.”
Maine might be the most important Senate race in 2026, given that a Republican presidential candidate hasn’t carried the state since 1988—and yet Collins has represented it since 1997. Many pundits outside the state, including me, wrote off Platner after his scandal-plagued October, but it’s increasingly clear that he’s the front-runner.