I think it's fair to say that at this point, a majoity of people on this forum think Collins will lose her senate race in 2020. However, a lot of this seems to be based of of 2 early polls that showed her narrowly losing, and several controversial vote that have sunk her approval rating. While this election will certainly be closer than it was in 2014, I don't see her loosing for a variety of reasons:
1. She won her previous election with 70% of the vote
2. Some of her disaproval comes from Rs who don't think she's "extreme" enough
3. ME has a large independent swing vote group that allowed Angus King to win by a landsldie in 2018, despite there being another D on the ballot that would split the liberal vote.
4. It's hard to pinpoint the true partisan lean of ME, but it's not all that blue of a state
5. Gideon isn't a great challenger in my opinion because her fundraising hasn't been great, and she doesn't come off as being moderate, and comes off as running as a stunt to unseat Collins, whereas someone like Manchin or Tester in 2018 didn't play national politics, but instead ran on the issues important to their state, and ended up winning, while someone like McCatskill trying ot play national politics lost.
6. Susan Collins can still save herself. She can take another controversial vote in favor of Ds to balance herself more. She can also distance herself from Trump
7. Susan Collins doesn't have to outperform Trump by much. ME isn't going to Biden by 15 points, sorry.
8. She still has some moderate votes to run on. This is stuff like healthcare, and many older voters may vote Collins-Biden based on healthcare alone.
Idk if it's juts me, but I feel like people are saying Gideon will win just because they want it to be true, when it still seems based upon all available data and what we know about ME, Collins is a clear favorite. Am I missing something?
I just wanted to add that trump can very well win Maine at large and if he is odds are Collins is also winning
