WASHINGTON — A shock internal poll for scandal-scarred Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner shows a possible warning sign in his quest to beat incumbent Sen. Susan Collins.
The internal Public Policy Polling poll had Platner beating Collins (R-Maine) 49% to 45% among registered voters, which is barely outside the 3.8 percentage point margin of error.
Roughly 6% of registered voters in the survey were undecided.
But that’s considerably below the 7.8 percentage point lead he has over Collins in the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, which only has polls from before the sexting scandal broke.
Crucially, the RCP aggregate had Collins down by about 5 percentage points in 2020. She won reelection by 8.6 points.
PPP largely conducts polling for various candidates within the Democratic Party. The internal poll was revealed in a Platner campaign memo about the state of the race amid a string of controversies.
Platner’s campaign painted a rosy picture about his standing in the race, claiming the poll is “slightly stronger” than a prior internal one it conducted in mid-May.
It’s not immediately clear what the poll from last month said and whether they used the same polling firm.
“The horse race is consistent with — in fact, slightly stronger than – the campaign’s own most recent internal polling from mid-May, reinforcing the durability of Platner’s lead rather than reflecting a single favorable outlier,” the campaign said in the memo, which has been widely circulated.
The oyster farmer’s team also touted an 18% increase in small-dollar donations relative to last week, including a 27% uptick among small-dollar donors in Maine.
“Across the board – the poll numbers, the fundraising, the conversations with voters — all signs point in our favor,” the memo argued.
That happy talk comes in the wake of a bombshell story about Platner sexting other women while married. A campaign official confirmed to the New York Times that he exchanged messages with up to six women, though other sources claimed it could be as many as a dozen.
Additionally, it was revealed that Platner had a profile on Kik, an anonymous platform notorious for hookups and marital infidelity.
The sexting revelations came in addition to a series of scandals emanating from his since-deleted Reddit account, including posts suggesting sexual assault victims need to “take some responsibility,” trashing a Purple Heart veteran, ripping rural Americans as racist, and more.
Perhaps the biggest controversy broke last October when it was revealed that Platner once had a tattoo on his chest of a Totenkopf, or “death’s head” symbol, which was used by the Nazi SS.
The oyster farmer denied knowing its Nazi links and has since inked over it.
The internal poll sampled 670 registered voters in Maine and was conducted from June 2–3.
