ME-Sen Collins Leads 52% to 35% Over Gideon

[Gracile]

I think it will be closer than this in the end (Collins is bound to lose some of her favorability among Democrats when she actually starts seriously campaigning and the Democratic nominee becomes more known), but it's pretty clear that Collins has a firm advantage that she could maintain until election day.

[Gracile]

Collins has never been attacked on her Kavanaugh vote in the context of a real political campaign. While there was a lot of fervor in the aftermath of the vote, that stuff can very quickly get overlooked - especially since she wasn't running at the time. It is likely that one of the reasons her favorabilities among Dems/Independents is because the Kavanaugh incident isn't at the top of voters' minds. I still think Collins is favored to win, but it's not out of the question that Gideon or whoever could capitalize on her record, weakening much of her crossover appeal in the process (such a thing is very common in our current era of heavily partisan politics).