ME-Pan Atlantic Research: Janet Mills (D) heading for the win

[MAINEiac4434]

Holt shit she’s actually up by 8

[MAINEiac4434]

But I thought Maine was a red state now...

Collins vote to affirm Kavanaugh has damaged Moody's chances

Polling of ME-02 (admittedly the more conservative half of the state) shows that Collins's vote is approved by a wide margin. It's hard to imagine that it would be as radically opposed in ME-01, which would be necessary for it to have any negative effect on statewide Republicans.

This has nothing to do with Collins and everything to do with LePage.

The NYT sample seemed Republican leaning (it actually polled more Republicans and Democrats still have a registration advantage there).

[MAINEiac4434]

Mills leading the 2nd district is probably good news for Golden

[MAINEiac4434]

Unless there’s some kind of crazy herding going on in think Mills is up by 8, folks

*nods excitedly*

Moody has not united Republicans (I guess joining the party a few days before you announce your campaign isn’t good strategy), and Democrats are not defecting their candidate.

[MAINEiac4434]

Holt shit she’s actually up by 8

What is it, the fourth poll where she's led by exactly 8? That's odd.

Third, but they've all been released consecutively and in the last few weeks.

Slingshot Strategies, a Hayes internal, found Mills to be at 41 with Moody at 33, Hayes at 10 and Caron at 2.

Change Research found Mills at 52 with Moody at 44 in the H2H, and apparently didn't poll the independents.

And now Pan Atlantic.

[MAINEiac4434]

PanAtlantic predicted a LePage 7 point margin in 2014. LePage ended up winning by 5.

https://twitter.com/stevemistler/status/1053467889737613312

This might be the Pan Atlantic might be the Marquette of Maine.

[MAINEiac4434]

Perhaps Mills wasn't such a bad candidate after all.

Moody’s actually turned out to be a shit candidate. Mills has done an excellent job uniting the left (her featuring Betsy Sweet whenever she can is certainly a positive in that regard), much better than I expected. Hayes running to the right also helped. She’s also come off really well in debates, making me wonder if she got some professional help there, as she was kind of shit at debates during the primary.

Moody has really failed to effectively attack Mills and her tenure as AG. He could’ve concern-trolled about her stance on water rights, which the tribes are still incensed about, and he didn’t. He could’ve accused her of politicizing the office in her vigorous battles against LePage, and didn’t. His entire schtick has been “muh taxes.” He's also become distracted by Hayes’s right-leaning candidacy, and now has to fight her off to keep from dropping even more.

Mills also runs more ads than Moody, and hers are (largely) positive — or at least I’ve seen her run positive ads, and I haven’t seen Moody run one.

So half of this is Mills being a better candidate than we thought, and the other half is Moody being an abysmal candidate.

[MAINEiac4434]

To my larger point, this is from a friend of mine:

https://twitter.com/aknight__47/status/1054773435690348549?s=21

Moody hasn’t done a good job reaching out to the right. Hayes and Caron are inept.