ME-SEN: Planter was not winning over white working class voters.

[RandySF]

A New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll a few weeks ago found Platner leading Sen. Susan Collins by just two points among likely Maine voters. But among the white working-class voters he was supposedly built to attract, Platner won only 36 percent support.

That was worse than Democratic gubernatorial nominee Hannah Pingree, who received 45 percent from the same group. It was also below even Kamala Harris’s 39 percent share among Maine’s white working-class voters in 2024.

So the problem with Platner was not merely that Democrats picked a flawed candidate. It’s that they built a caricature of a working-class candidate based on what highly educated political operatives imagined working-class voters wanted.

The result was predictable. Maine’s working-class voters weren’t buying it.




https://politicalwire.com/2026/07/07/democrats-still-dont-get-working-class-voters/