Two new Maine polls find a dead heat, and Jackson's chance slips to 60 percent

Two new polls of the Maine Senate race find Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent, and Troy Jackson, the Democrat, effectively even. After adding them, our model gives Jackson a 60 in 100 chance of winning, down from 63% in our previous run earlier today.

A Trafalgar Group survey of 1,091 likely voters, fielded September 29 to October 1, has Jackson at 46.2% and Collins at 45.9%. That three-tenths of a point gap is not a lead; the race in that poll is close. A YouGov poll for CBS News of 1,136 likely voters, fielded September 23 to October 1, has the two candidates tied at 50% each.

Neither result shows Jackson ahead by as much as our model already expected, so both pull the estimate slightly toward Collins. Our projected margin moves from D+1.8 to D+1.5. The change is small, and it narrows a race our model already treated as competitive rather than reshaping it. Our range of plausible outcomes, from the 5th to the 95th percentile, now runs from R+7.7 to D+10.6, compared with R+7.4 to D+10.9 before these polls. Collins's chance in our model rises from 37% to 40%.

The race matters for the national picture. Our model gives Democrats a 53% chance of winning Senate control, against 46% for Republicans, with an average of 50.6 Democratic seats in our simulations. Democrats need 51 seats for control. Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to them.