NEW: Susan Collins Leads Graham Platner in First Major Poll

Fox News released a new poll this week on both Maine’s crucial Senate race and gubernatorial contest, the first major poll to find Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) besting progressive challenger Graham Platner.

Polling in the race in May showed Platner with a lead of anywhere between 7 and 9 points, which tightened significantly in late June with a New York Times/Siena poll showing Platner up by only two.

The Fox poll is the first major poll to show Collins with a lead, and while Fox News is best-known as a right-leaning, often pro-Trump outlet, its polling has long been considered among the best in the business, often drawing the fury of President Donald Trump himself.

Anchor Dana Perino introduced the poll on air Wednesday, “Let’s get to the midterms. Control of the Senate’s hanging in the balance, and if Democrats are able to flip that chamber, the race in Maine is seen as a must-win. New Fox polling shows Susan Collins has a narrow lead among all voters, but challenger Graham Platner leads among the extremely motivated.”

“So Reince Priebus, Fox News political analyst, that would make sense, right? That if you want change, you are highly motivated. Susan Collins has been in there a while, obviously, but she won her last race by nine points in the end,” Perino asked the former RNC chair.

“Yeah, she won by nine points in a, in an extremely high turnout race in 2020. So she did extremely well. But this is not a midterm, excuse me, this is a presidential year vote. So an all-registered voter poll isn’t exactly something that you would actually need to figure out what’s going to happen in this race,” Priebus replied, adding:

This is midterm turnout. So what you’re going to need here is really a couple things. This is a midterm turnout surgery race, and so what Collins needs to do is turn this into a question of Graham Platner. She needs to spend money driving Graham Platner’s negatives up. She needs to spend money on her own personality. And then she needs to do what I said before, turnout surgery, which is find the people that vote in Maine in a midterm election.

What I found very interesting about this race is that Collins’s vote in rural Maine was way up, and among people that don’t have a college degree, she was also way up. Which tells you that Platner’s support is not this working-class, rural Maine thing that he plays up. It is a rich, super-educated, non-religiously affiliated liberal that is supporting Platner. And the fact that she’s ahead in an all-registered vote already, I think that’s actually pretty good news for her, to be honest.

“And you brought up exactly what I wanted to bring up about that poll, that was so interesting. There was one other piece of it saying that Platner lacks the judgment to serve: 54% say yes, and Collins has been in office too long: 53%. So I think that’s where you’re going to see the messaging go. Let’s go to Texas,” Perino replied.

The poll was conducted between June 23-27 among a sample of 1,003 Maine registered voters and has a 3-point margin of error.

Other interesting data points from the poll, include that Platner is running significantly behind Maine’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Hannah Pingree. The poll found Pingree leading her GOP rival by 11 points, meaning Platner is trailing her by a whopping 14 points.

The poll also showed that Platner has a higher net negative favorability rating than Collins, with 43% to 53% of voters viewing him favorably vs unfavorably. Collins, on the other hand, has a 47% to 50% split, putting her only 3 points underwater to his 10 points.

Watch the full clip above.

The post NEW: Susan Collins Leads Graham Platner in First Major Poll first appeared on Mediaite.