Jay Field
Editor's Note: This commentary piece originally published on the author's Substack, "Unorganized Territory," and has been republished on IVN with permission and by request of the author.
The NFL is back—so back baby! But in the final stretch of a volatile, cranky election year, all good things come with a price.
If you live in Maine and tuned in to watch the Pats lay that big fat egg on Wednesday night, you may have seen this.
Or this.
Or maybe this.
The onslaught of ads come back to back to back. They can make you want to turn your TV off and chuck the remote in the nearest body of water. Or just hit mute repeatedly, though that requires a level of vigilance that’s antithetical to the whole idea of chilling with friends and family and watching the game.
Some of you, however, may share my unfortunate affliction of needing to understand why you’re being served up different ads at different times. I’m truly sorry if this is the case. But in all seriousness, what is the rhyme or reason behind the ads you’re seeing?
It’s actually a great week to ponder this question, in part because CNN just dropped the first high-quality poll on Maine’s U.S. Senate race since Troy Jackson became the Democratic nominee.
The poll—with deep and rich cross tabs—is a fascinating snapshot of a very close race. It surveyed a total of 880 registered voters, then weighted the sample to a likely voter pool.
Overall, Troy Jackson leads Susan Collins 48% to 45% with a margin of error of +/- 3.7%.
Beneath the horse race number are a slew of more telling data points and trends that shed light on all those ads people in Maine are seeing on their TVs, tablets and smart phones.
When sampled by political party and ideology, both senate candidates are getting over 90% of the vote in their respective parties, while Unenrolled/Independents are split more or less evenly between Collins and Jackson.
President Trump’s overall job approval rating in the poll is just 31% with 67% of those surveyed disapproving of his performance as president.
Diving deeper into the Trump disapprovers cohort is where the poll really gets interesting.
Troy Jackson is winning 71% of this group, while Collins is getting 20%.
What does this mean?
Shouldn’t Jackson be drawing more support from Trump disapprovers in light of the President’s historically low approval rating?
Well, it’s kind of like the old “It’s complicated” relationship status on Facebook.
Deeper in the cross tabs is this nugget: 18% of Trump disapprovers want the GOP to retain control of Congress—a number that matches, almost exactly, the 20% support number Collins is getting from this same group.
What’s clear is that a certain number of these Trump disapprovers will support Susan Collins no matter what.
The good news for Troy Jackson is that some percentage of them remain open to persuasion. 17% report they’re still persuadable, while 4% haven’t chosen a candidate yet. Further, Troy Jackson’s favorable/unfavorable ratings among Trump disapprovers is 52%/25%, which means roughly 23% have no opinion of thus far.
So what does some of this data tell us about all those ads we’re seeing?
First, it’s worth noting that both campaigns have internal polls that likely show trends that are similar to those in the CNN survey, but also reach some different conclusions as well.
Unlike Graham Platner, who achieved universal name ID in Maine in a short period of time, Troy Jackson is still unknown to a sizable group of persuadable voters who could decide a close election. Troy Jackson’s campaign wants these folks to see him as an authentic, blue collar Mainer from a humble rural background, who’s spent his life fighting powerful interests on their behalf. Hence the ad with Jackson and his mother.
The Collins campaign, by comparison, is racing to define Jackson in a very different way.
They want this group of persuadable voters to see him as an out of touch leftist radical, promoting policies that would unshackle big government and take money from voters’ pockets through higher taxes. Hence the spots tying Jackson to a far left, DSA-aligned agenda and out of control property tax hikes.
Susan Collins’s strongest calling card with this group is the same one she’s relied on in past successful reelection campaigns: her political identity/brand as a moderate, stable presence in Washington, who advocates successfully for Maine without rocking the boat too much.
In a close election, the Jackson campaign needs to undercut this brand with just enough persuadable voters to get their guy across the finish line.
With Trump’s approval at an all-time low and 84% of voters in the CNN poll expressing dissatisfaction with the overall direction of the country, ads like the one above from WinSenate make sense.
The argument is more nuanced than “Collins is a rubber stamp” for Trump.
It’s that on certain key votes impacting the economy, health care, civil liberties and reproductive freedom Collins has forgotten where she comes from and is hurting Maine people.