Democrats just got a nasty surprise in one of the Senate races they can least afford to lose.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins has moved ahead of Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in a major new Maine poll.
The result does not settle the race. It does warn Democrats that they cannot simply pencil Maine into their column and move on.
Siena Research Institute reported Thursday that Collins leads Jackson 49% to 46% among likely Maine voters. The official release placed Maine alongside new battleground surveys from Michigan and New Hampshire.
The survey was conducted for The New York Times and the Portland Press Herald. It is the first major public poll of the fall campaign to show Collins with a lead over Jackson, reversing the direction of the two most prominent late-summer surveys.
That three-point advantage remains inside the poll’s roughly five-point margin of error. In plain English, this is still a close race, but Collins is now the candidate nearest the 50% threshold.
But Democrats have spent months treating Maine as a critical pickup opportunity. Seeing the Republican incumbent at 49% changes the conversation with only weeks left before Election Day.
Siena’s executive director, Don Levy, stressed that the poll was completed before newly reported allegations involving Collins became part of the campaign. That timing gives Democrats an argument that the race may move again, but it does not erase the baseline: Collins was already leading when the controversy arrived.
The same Siena release showed Democrats ahead by five points in the must-hold Michigan and New Hampshire Senate races. Maine moved the other way, leaving Collins as the Republican with the clearest lead among the three marquee contests released Thursday.
NYT/Siena poll | 9/15-9/22 LV
US Senate Maine 2026
Susan Collins 49%
Troy Jackson 46% pic.twitter.com/vqWacWSkfx
— Nobody Knows Anything (@NKAnythingPod) September 24, 2026
The topline is only part of the bad news for Jackson.
The Portland Press Herald reported that the poll surveyed 619 likely voters from September 15 through September 22 and carried a 4.8% margin of error.
Collins and Jackson were tied among independents at 47% apiece. Collins also drew support from 8% of Democrats, while Jackson captured only 3% of Republicans.
The crossover numbers were even more revealing. Roughly 12% of voters who backed Kamala Harris in 2024 said they now plan to vote for Collins.
About 13% of Collins voters said they still want Democrats to control the Senate. That is the unusual coalition she has assembled before: voters who dislike the national Republican brand but are willing to split their ticket for her.
Collins also held a major advantage on experience. Fifty-four percent said she would be the more effective senator, and nearly 60% believed she would bring more resources back to Maine.
That is a difficult hurdle for Jackson, who is trying to run as the authentic working-class alternative to a five-term incumbent.
The poll found Jackson drawing just 34% among voters without a college degree. For a former logger who has made his labor roots the centerpiece of his campaign, that number should set off alarms.
Jackson’s pitch is built around the idea that Collins has been in Washington too long and has lost touch with ordinary Mainers.
His campaign has leaned heavily into housing costs, health care, labor and the influence of out-of-state corporations. Those themes are designed to move exactly the voters with whom the new poll shows him struggling.
BREAKING: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has taken a 49% to 46% lead over Democratic challenger Troy Jackson in her reelection race, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.
The three-point advantage marks the latest survey showing Collins gaining ground, though the race… pic.twitter.com/uvYLqcBRdq
— Off The Press (@OffThePress1) September 24, 2026
The movement toward Collins is especially notable because the broader political environment in Maine is hardly friendly to Republicans.
The Bangor Daily News reported that only 32% of likely voters in the same poll approved of President Donald Trump’s job performance, underscoring how far Collins is running ahead of the national party brand.
Those voters preferred Democratic control of the Senate by 55% to 43%. Collins nevertheless reached 49% in the head-to-head race, a striking split-ticket gap in a polarized election year.
The same report noted that Jackson had led 48% to 46% in an August Fox News poll and 48% to 45% in a CNN survey conducted in early September.
The shift coincided with a torrent of Republican advertising. GOP groups accounted for $49.1 million of the $83.8 million in ad reservations made since Jackson entered the race in late July, according to the Bangor Daily News.
Collins also improved her personal standing. The Times-Siena poll found 51% viewing her favorably and 48% unfavorably, a sharp contrast with earlier surveys that placed her favorability underwater.
Jackson, meanwhile, was eight points underwater.
The Bangor Daily News also found that Collins was taking 12% of voters who backed Harris in 2024, while Jackson was winning just 3% of Trump voters. That crossover advantage helps explain how Collins can lead even as Trump and the Republican brand struggle statewide.
The outlet described this as Collins’s best showing in a major public survey of the November race. It also noted that her standing improved after weeks of Republican advertising aimed at defining Jackson before many voters had formed a firm impression of him.
There is one major caveat. Siena said most of the survey work was completed before new allegations about Collins and federal spending tied to a campaign donor became public.
No one in Collins’s office was charged, and her office has strongly denied the claims. But Democrats will now spend the closing stretch trying to make the controversy stick with the moderate voters currently giving Collins her edge.
Jackson’s campaign was in a far better mood two weeks ago.
Troy Jackson for Maine touted the September CNN poll that had him leading 48% to 45% among registered voters.
The campaign argued that Mainers were ready to retire Collins and attacked her record on abortion, immigration and President Trump.
Jackson’s team pointed to the CNN survey of 880 registered voters conducted from August 31 through September 6. In that poll, he led Collins by three points, and his campaign presented the result as proof that its working-class message was breaking through.
A campaign spokesperson framed the contest as a referendum on Collins’s long record in Washington, highlighting her Supreme Court votes, support for immigration enforcement funding and alignment with Trump. That was the argument Democrats wanted to carry into November.
The new Siena numbers do not make those issues disappear. They do show that the previous Jackson lead was never secure and that Collins has found room to recover while the paid-media war accelerates.
That message still has a real audience. Jackson’s supporters were more enthusiastic in the new Siena survey, with 66% describing themselves as very enthusiastic compared with 54% of Collins voters.
Enthusiasm matters in a close midterm race. So does the fact that the current Collins lead is statistically uncertain.
But Democrats now have to confront a harder truth: Collins is once again separating herself from an unpopular national Republican brand and pulling just enough voters across party lines to survive.
She has done it before. In 2020, Collins won reelection by nine points after trailing in every public poll.
Nobody should treat one survey as destiny, especially one with a margin of error larger than the candidate gap.
Yet this poll strips away the comforting assumption that Maine is already moving toward the Democrats.
Jackson is behind, his working-class message is not landing strongly enough with noncollege voters, and Collins is sitting one point shy of an outright majority.
For Democrats trying to claw back control of the Senate, the consequences reach far beyond Maine.
It is the kind of warning that can force an entire national strategy to be rewritten.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post JUST IN: Democrats Hit With Brutal New Poll In Must-Win Senate Race appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
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