A new New York Times poll of three closely watched Senate and House races shows Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine leading her Democratic challenger, State Senate President Troy Jackson, by three points, 49 to 46 percent, among likely voters.
The Times surveyed 619 likely voters across Maine, Michigan and New Hampshire between September 15 and 22. The Maine result marks a shift from June, when the same publication had Collins trailing Democratic candidate Graham Platner by two points, 49 to 47 percent. Platner, who won the Democratic primary, was later pushed out of the race by party leaders following sexual abuse allegations and controversy over a tattoo linked to Nazi imagery. Jackson was installed as the Democratic nominee in his place.
Collins’s three-point lead in the new poll is the second recent survey to put her ahead. A Quantus Insight poll conducted around the same time had her up by one point, 47 to 46 percent.
A history of outperforming the polls
Collins has a track record of beating her polling numbers in past campaigns, and analysts note that an incumbent polling near 50 percent is generally in a strong position heading into an election, since a candidate only needs 50 percent plus one vote to win.
Questions about the poll’s turnout model
The Times built its survey on a turnout model assuming former Vice President Kamala Harris would have carried the three-state sample by 11 points, 52 to 41 percent, over President Trump. That assumption does not match the 2024 results in any of the three states.
In Maine, Harris beat Trump by 6.9 points in 2024, and pre-election polling there significantly underestimated Trump’s actual support, with surveys projecting a Harris win of anywhere from nine to 17 points.
In Michigan, Trump actually won the state by 1.4 points in 2024. The Times’ model effectively assumes a 5.4-point swing toward Democrats for the midterms. Even with that built-in advantage, the poll shows Democratic Senate nominee Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, known as Abdul El-Sayed, leading Republican opponents by only five points, 49 to 45 percent. By comparison, the RealClearPolitics polling average currently has El-Sayed ahead by 2.7 points. Michigan polling in 2024 underestimated Trump’s support by about two points.
In New Hampshire, the Times poll shows Democrat Chris Pappas leading Republican John Sununu by five points, 50 to 45 percent, in the race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. Trump lost New Hampshire by 2.8 points in 2024, and other polling in the state has shown Republicans trailing by nearly five points.
A pattern worth watching
Two patterns are worth noting heading into the midterms. Polling in the Trump era has repeatedly underestimated Republican support, and midterm surveys generally assume, through their weighting methods, that many Trump voters will not turn out. Whether that assumption holds will only be settled at the ballot box.
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