Is Graham Platner Solving the Wrong Problem for Maine Democrats?
November 3, 2025 · 1:30 PM EST
Ever since Graham Platner launched his campaign two months ago, the oysterman and political newcomer has dominated the conversation around Maine’s Senate race. But while Platner looks like the type of candidate who can help Democrats change the party’s national image, he might not be the right Democrat to defeat GOP Sen. Susan Collins, given the longtime incumbent’s unique strengths.
Still reeling from Donald Trump’s improved showing among younger and more disaffected voters in the 2024 election, Democrats in Maine and across the country have been looking for answers. Platner, whose pitch-perfect launch video showcased his rugged appearance, economic populism, and frustration with politics as usual, offers them just that.
“After our historic loss in the 2024 election, conversations within the Democratic Party have rightly centered on age, the loss of young men, the working class, and the growing disillusionment of young voters,” former DNC vice chairman David Hogg said as he endorsed Platner last month. “As our party charts a path forward, Graham Platner represents not the entire solution, but a vital step in the right direction.”
Even as Platner’s campaign has weathered weeks of negative headlines about his offensive Reddit posts and the tattoo of a Nazi symbol he has since covered up, he has remained focused on his potential to expand the Democratic coalition by recapturing voters who have left the party for Trump over the past decade.
“How do you expect to win back men when you go back through somebody’s Reddit history and just pull it all out and say: ‘Oh my God, this person has no right to ever be in politics?’” the candidate said in an interview with Semafor. “Good luck with that. Good luck winning over those demographics.”
Platner and his allies have diagnosed a real problem facing Democrats on the national stage. Men aged 18-49 swung 12 points toward Trump between 2020 and 2024, according to the Pew Research Center, the biggest shift of any age group in any direction.
And, as a 41-year-old first-time candidate and Marine veteran, Platner may seem like the right vessel to win them back — especially in contrast to his main opponent in the Democratic primary, outgoing Gov. Janet Mills, the 77-year-old choice of Senate leadership and a decades-long fixture in Maine politics.
Democrats may well have to regain ground among those demographics in order to win more national elections. And in other, more Republican-leaning states such as Nebraska and Iowa — places where the team behind Platner has recruited populist political newcomers with military backgrounds to run for Senate — it may be integral to winning crossover voters and overperforming the top of the ticket.
But young men and disillusioned voters are unlikely to be the key to winning Maine specifically, a Democratic-leaning state where Collins has nonetheless managed to hold on by convincing enough Mainers to split their tickets. The goal for Democratic Senate hopefuls there isn’t to outperform the top of the ticket, but rather to match the victories managed by Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris over the past three presidential elections.
Harris held up well in Maine despite her struggles elsewhere, winning the state by 7 points in 2024. Her performance mirrored that of Biden in 2020, who won it by 9 points, despite Harris lagging Biden by 6 points nationwide. That’s an indication that the issues Democrats face more broadly aren’t as prevalent in the Pine Tree State.
Exit polling data helps explain how Collins was able to win re-election in 2020 even in the face of Biden’s strong showing at the top of the ticket — making her the only senator that year to win a state that was carried by the opposite party’s presidential nominee.
Collins’ strength, and the reason she was able to outperform Trump by 18 points, was her support among Democratic-leaning constituencies.
Women, older voters, college graduates, voters in Maine’s larger cities, and Democrats were Collins’ strongest groups relative to Trump, according to the Edison Research exit poll conducted for CNN, CBS News, NBC News, and ABC News in 2020. Meanwhile, men, younger voters, voters without a college degree, rural voters, and Republicans split their tickets at much lower rates. Collins’ Democratic opponent, former state House Speaker Sara Gideon, actually hit her marks among many of those voters despite facing criticism for her weaker connections to the state and leaving $14 million in campaign funds unspent at the end of the race.
For instance, let’s take a closer look at the difference between Collins’ support and Trump’s support by age and gender. Collins outperformed Trump by the most among older voters, especially women aged 45 and older. However, Collins had no special appeal among men under age 65, winning them at virtually the same rate as Trump.
Men aged 18-29 were Collins’ weakest demographic relative to the top of the ticket; in fact, they were the only group tested in the exit poll that voted for Gideon by a larger margin than they voted for Biden. But Gideon also held up remarkably well among men aged 30-44 and 45-64, only lagging the top of the ticket by a few points.
However, Collins outperformed Trump among women aged 45-64 by 33 points and women aged 65 and older by 26 points, which proved decisive.
The story is similar for education and gender. Among college-educated women, Collins outran Trump by 29 points. She also beat Trump’s margins by 22 points among women without a college degree and by 19 points among men with one. But among non-college-educated men — Platner’s calling card — Collins essentially matched Trump’s performance.
Regionally, Collins excelled the most among women in the Bangor and Auburn areas, and she also performed strongly with women from more rural areas such as Down East Maine, the rocky coastline that includes Platner’s hometown of Sullivan. There were also lots of Collins-Biden voters, of both genders, in metro Portland, the state’s largest city.
But among men from Down East, such as Platner, and further along the shoreline in Southern Maine, Collins barely outperformed Trump, running ahead of the top of the ticket by 3 and 4 points, respectively.
Finally, if we take a look at the exit poll results by party, we can see that Republicans were not the key to Collins’ victory; her overall margin among GOP voters was only 7 points better than Trump’s. By contrast, Collins did 18 points better than Trump among self-identified Democrats.
Collins’ greatest strength, however, was among independents, among whom she outran Trump by 27 points. This is probably the best news that the exit poll has to offer Platner, who may hold appeal to independent voters as someone who is not associated with the Democratic Party establishment. But even that overperformance was driven by independent women, among whom Collins performed 37 points better than Trump. Her margin among independent men was just 11 points better than the president’s.
Though just one data point, the 2020 election suggests that the biggest potential areas for growth for a Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine are not among the voters Platner is targeting. Instead, they are among more traditional Democratic constituencies like women and college graduates, as well as older voters — the voters who may be most turned off by Platner’s scandals.
Platner may have a credible case to make for his ability to win back voters who have abandoned the Democratic Party in recent years, and it is possible that he could defeat Collins in 2026 by assembling such a coalition. However, the easier path for Democrats would probably be winning over Collins voters who are already voting for Democrats in other races. Any Democrat who can’t erase or significantly reduce Collins’ advantage among women, older voters, and college educated voters faces a steep hill to climb, and it’s a reasonable question for Democrats to ask if Platner, given his focus and his unique vulnerabilities, can do that.
Without more extensive polling, the answer is unknowable for now. But in a race focused on electability, it’s the most important question for Democrats.
It’s not obvious that Mills is the answer either. Her campaign and allies believe she is, and they point to her two wins in 2018 and 2022 that involved winning many of the same types of voters who split their tickets for Collins in 2020 — and doing better than either Gideon, Biden, or Harris among more rural and conservative voters. But the 77-year-old governor would be the oldest elected freshman senator in American history. And, though Maine is the oldest state in the nation (by median age) and Collins faces her own age questions at 72, voters appear more and more skeptical of aging candidates in the post-Biden era.
It’s not obvious either if Mills can beat Platner in a Democratic primary, despite the latter’s weeks of turmoil. Platner’s grassroots energy is still evident on the ground, and while there is limited polling of the race, his numbers are still strong against Mills. While the June 9 primary is still seven months away, Mills has more work to do if she wants to test her theory of the case against Collins.
And the primary presents an opportunity for Platner to show that he can broaden his appeal to the very voters he’ll need to win in a general election, if he can outpace Mills among women, college educated voters, and others. (A third candidate in the primary, former Democratic operative Jordan Wood, has raised some money but struggled to gain traction even as he presents himself as a third way between Mills and Platner — younger than the former, less controversial than the latter.)
Maine is a must-win state for Democrats if they want to capture the majority, and its Senate race comes at a precarious moment for the party nationally as it struggles to regain its footing against Trump. But the two challenges for Democrats — the Collins problem and the Trump problem — are markedly different. The national problem will frustrate Democrats for the next three years, if not beyond. But it will be up to Maine voters, and much sooner, to decide if Platner, Mills, or neither are the solution to the Collins one.