Troy Jackson defeats Susan Collins in Maine, ending her nearly 30 years in the Senate

PORTLAND, Maine, Nov. 4 – Troy Jackson has defeated Susan Collins. The Democrat won Maine’s Senate race on Tuesday, ending the five-term Republican’s long run in Washington, according to a projection by the Associated Press.

It was one of the biggest upsets of the midterm elections. Collins has been in the Senate since 1997, and for years she was seen as one of the hardest Republicans in the country to beat.

She had pulled off surprises before. In 2020, many polls showed her behind, but she still won by a comfortable margin. This time, her luck ran out.

For Democrats, the seat was one they wanted most. Republicans went into the vote with 53 seats to the Democrats’ 47. So the Democrats needed a gain of four seats to take control, and Maine was near the top of their list.

Jackson is 58. He grew up in Allagash, a small town in far northern Maine, and worked as a logger before he went into politics. He later rose to lead the state senate, serving as its president for several years.

He ran on what he called economic populism, with a focus on working families, wages and the cost of living. And he spent much of the race trying to break down the image Collins has built over the years, as a moderate who is willing to stand up to President Donald Trump.

He said she was, in fact, a loyal supporter of the president. He pointed to key votes, such as her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh was part of the majority that overturned the national right to an abortion.

Collins hit back. She said Jackson was all over the map on the issues and didn’t have the experience to deliver for Maine in Washington.

She also argued that her influence paid off for the state. As chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she often talked about the millions of federal dollars she had helped bring home for roads, ports, research and other projects.

She was the only Senate Republican running this year in a state that Trump lost in 2024. And both candidates went after the same group of voters, the many people in Maine who split their tickets in 2020, voting for Joe Biden for president and for Collins for the Senate.

The race was close and often bitter. Each side accused the other of corruption, and they clashed repeatedly over the rising cost of living in Maine.

Those costs were difficult to ignore this year. Fuel prices increased after the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February. Heating oil reached record highs, and the impact became more painful as temperatures dropped in the weeks before the election. In a state where many homes rely on oil for heat, the higher costs hit families especially hard.

Trump’s tariffs also hurt several of the state’s key industries, which rely on trade with Canada.

Jackson wasn’t even the party’s first pick. The first Democratic nominee, Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and former Marine, dropped out in July after a string of scandals. They ended with an allegation of sexual assault, which Platner denied.

So Maine Democrats had just a few weeks to hold a special convention and choose someone else. Jackson won that vote in late July. That left him with just 101 days to run a Senate campaign against one of the best-known names.

Earlier in the year, he had run for governor and lost in the primary. During that campaign, he and Platner had appeared together, and Collins tried hard to tie the two of them together.

It didn’t work. The polls stayed close all fall. A Fox News poll in October had the two tied at 49 percent. The final poll by The New York Times and Siena College had Jackson ahead, 51 percent to 45 percent.

Maine uses ranked-choice voting in its federal races. Under that system, if no candidate wins more than half of the first-choice votes, the lowest-placed candidates are dropped, and their votes go to the voters’ next choices until someone has a majority.

Collins was first elected to the Senate in 1996. Jackson will be sworn in to the seat in January.