In the wake of Graham Platner announcing he is leaving the race for Senate, the Maine Democratic Party has decided to select its nominee in a convention later this month, with delegates selected by the state and county party committees.
The question looming over this convention will be, "Who do Maine Democratic voters actually want as their nominee?"
To answer this, we conducted a survey of voters who cast a ballot in the June Democratic primary in Maine.
We found that though voters are still fairly divided on which candidate they want to replace Graham Platner, there is a clear frontrunner in Troy Jackson—and there is little question they want a progressive.
Jackson leads the field at 40%, followed by Nirav Shah at 23% and Shenna Bellows at 14% with 10% undecided. Jackson's strongest leads are among voters under 40 (67% Jackson-12% Bellows-6% Shah), very progressive voters (54% Jackson-17% Bellows-11% Shah), and men (50% Jackson-18% Shah-13% Bellows). Shah leads among moderates (35% Shah-26% Jackson-7% Bellows) and voters 65 or older (32% Shah-28% Jackson-15% Bellows).
When limited to just the top three options, 44% of voters select Jackson, 28% Shah, and 16% Bellows.
Jackson is also the most palatable to the Democratic primary electorate as a whole — 20% of Democratic primary voters said they would not vote for Shah if he was the nominee; 14% said the same of Bellows; and just 9% said they would not vote for Jackson.
Jackson's profile as a strong progressive—he received endorsements in the gubernatorial race from Platner, Bernie Sanders, and Ro Khanna, among others—likely helps him, as 63% of respondents say they want their nominee to be "more progressive than most Democrats"; this includes a whopping 80% of voters under 50 and 56% of voters 50 and older. In the three-way matchup, voters who want a nominee to the left of most Democrats back Jackson at 56%, followed by Shah at 18% and Bellows at 17%.
Just 9% of respondents want a nominee more moderate than most Democrats.
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