From the macro to the micro
Trump's approvals among independents continue to take on water. Meanwhile, Maine Democrats need Gov. Janet Mills to challenge Sen. Susan Collins in order to have any shot.
Republicans have good reason to be frantically trying to change existing congressional-district boundaries. The September Gallup Poll released Monday showed President Trump’s approval rating both low and unchanged from August: 40 percent approve and 56 percent disapprove, just 1 point higher than his three-month average of 39 percent approval.
The survey showed the continuation of a pattern seen all year: Trump holds an extraordinarily high approval rating of 93 percent among his fellow Republicans (a three-month average of 92 percent), even better than eight years ago. Conversely, he has an even lower approval rating among Democrats than in 2017, now just 2 percent. (Before you think that it can’t get lower, his three-month average is, quite remarkably, about a half-point lower). The independents who sit in between give him a 32 percent approval rating, both for September and the three-month average, a bit lower than eight years ago. These independents aren’t so important in hardcore Democratic and Republican districts, but in swing areas, they are critical.
The comparisons with eight years ago are relevant for several reasons, not the least of which is that both then and now, Trump’s overall numbers have been both low and stable. That led to a loss of 42 seats in his midterm election, even higher than the historical average of two dozen seats. Even if Republicans claw back as many as a dozen net seats via redistricting, the economy is not likely to be the benefit it was last time. Trump has some pretty strong political headwinds. While he is far more effective at pursuing his agenda this time around, he’s creating political problems with swing voters that far outdistance those in 2017 and 2018.
Down on Maine Street
Switching from the macro to the micro, it appears that Maine Gov. Janet Mills is getting more likely to challenge GOP Sen. Susan Collins. This would be a big deal because, currently, retiring Sen. Thom Tillis’s seat in North Carolina is the only Republican-held seat that Democrats have even a respectable chance of capturing; they desperately need to get Maine on the table. Democratic chances in the red states of Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida are exceedingly remote; their chances in Texas are contingent upon Sen. John Cornyn losing his primary.
For months, Mills has indicated that she would decide by November, but now, with eight Democrats already in the race, it is a decent bet that Mills will need to expedite her timetable a bit.
Polling indicates that Collins is weaker than she was six years ago, and the political environment is not helping her much. Her state has voted for the Democrat in nine consecutive presidential elections. While Republicans have won 11 of the last 16 Senate races in the state, Trump’s Supreme Court and Cabinet nominees have severely strained Collins’s standing with swing voters who used to be reliably on her side.
Electorally speaking, Maine is a bit of a schizophrenic state. The 1st Congressional District, which includes Portland and the southern half of the coastline, voted for Vice President Kamala Harris by a 22-point margin, 60 to 38 percent. But the 2nd District, the northern half of the state’s coast (“Downeast”) and most of the state’s wooded interior, voted for Trump by 10 points, 54 to 44 percent.
The less tangible, but not insignificant, political offset is that Collins now chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, putting her in a position to deliver for the state as she never has before. While most average voters probably do not know that the Appropriations Committee even exists, it would be hard for them to escape being aware of some of the pork that she has delivered to the state. In a lightly populated and relatively poor state, that is a big deal.
Collins’s opponent six years ago, Sara Gideon, was politically way over her head, even though she was the speaker of the state House then. Her campaign apparatus was both extremely well-funded and totally inept. Despite being outspent, Collins defeated Gideon by almost 9 points, 51 to 42 percent. That same night, Trump was losing to Biden in the state by 9 points, 53 to 44 percent.
Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and former Marine from Sullivan, north of Bar Harbor, jumped into the race in August with an endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders, leveraging an initial flurry of favorable national press clippings into in-state coverage and out-of-state online fundraising.
The other notable political newcomer in the race is Dan Kleban, co-owner of Maine Beer Company (befitting its motto, “Do what’s right,” the company donates 1 percent of its sales to charity).
While Republicans have a bad habit of nominating poor Senate candidates in purple states, Democrats have their own idiosyncrasies. Online progressive donors have a bad habit of falling in love with novelty Senate candidates, either because they have an interesting background or because the Republican incumbents are so thoroughly despised by the Left. Well over a half billion dollars has been flushed down the toilet over the last decade in service of Democrats who usually had no shot of winning and could barely cover the party’s base vote in the state.
Collins may or may not have been a political heavyweight in 2020, but with that victory and her subsequent Appropriations chairmanship, she is now. Novice and novelty candidates can get to 40 percent, but the only way to beat a heavyweight is to run a heavyweight. If Mills runs, she has no worse than a 50-50 chance of winning the general election. If she doesn’t, Democrats have little shot at all, no matter how interesting their nominee might be.