Is Susan Collins Unbeatable (and is Chuck Schumer in Trouble)?

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

One of the biggest conundrums in 2020 politics, and really in all of American politics right now, remains Susan Collins.  We have discussed the senator from Maine many times on this blog, and this will almost certainly not be the last the article devoted to her.  She's a woman who has made a name for herself throughout her career as an important swing vote, a moderate senator who under President Trump has gone increasingly, swiftly, to the right, while thanks to her fellow Republicans also running to that direction she still remains one of the more moderate, potential swing votes in the Senate even though she's rarely actually siding with the left (just remaining "concerned" about legislation and nominees).

But today is not about Collins' complicated politics, it's about her reelection prospects.  Collins remains one of the more popular US Senators in the country, with a 52% approval rating, putting her in the same company as her neighboring state's senator Jeanne Shaheen.  This past week Rep. Chellie Pingree and her daughter former House Speaker Hannah Pingree both declined to run for the seat, joining the likes of Rep. Jared Golden & former National Security Advisor Susan Rice in declining the race.  Polling of a woman who would be considered a top recruit to run against Collins, current House Speaker Sara Gideon (Gideon is arguably the last truly first tier candidate exploring the race) shows Collins ahead by 51-29 in a Pan-Atlantic poll conducted in March.  Collins, who despite casting the deciding vote in the hearings on Brett Kavanaugh, currently looks to be skating to an easy reelection in a state that Hillary Clinton won and that the Democratic nominee in 2020 desperately needs to win in order to be POTUS.

All of this made me think-is defeating Susan Collins a lost cause for the Democrats?  Has literally anyone come back from a polling margin this large?  Considering not only Maine, but also North Carolina & Iowa are without major candidates, is there any recent historical precedent for a challenger coming in and beating an incumbent US Senator this late in the cycle (it's nearly June)?  And if so, what does a candidate who can overcome those margins and late entry look like?  There is literally no math where the Democrats can take the Senate majority with Collins still being a senator (I can't think of a fathomable way this happens), so all of this may add up to whether or not Chuck Schumer has any hope of winning the Senate majority (and considering how Democrats will grow impatient with him, and likely primary him in 2022 if he can't win this majority, he may never have another chance at becoming Senate Majority Leader if he doesn't win in 2020).  Today we're going to look at Collins' polling margin, the potential late entry of someone like Gideon, and whether or not Schumer deserves the criticism being heaped by many political watchers (including me) about the lack of top-tier candidates in the states like IA/NC/ME that lack major challengers, or whether this criticism is premature.

Sen. George Allen (R-VA), the quintessential "blow a big lead" incumbent

1. The Polling Advantage

For the sake of argument, and because of the transformational, very partisan nature of the Obama and Trump administrations, we're going to limit any examples in this article to 2006 and later, as prior to that we're in the Bush and Clinton years, and I don't think they apply in the same way.  Collins margin of error here is admittedly just in one poll (she does slightly worse in generic match-ups and even that polling is limited), so I'm going to look for examples of people who polled, at closer than March the year prior to the election, near a margin of 22-points behind the incumbent in at least one poll and still ended up beating the senator.  I'm going to limit myself only to polls that matched the eventual general election matchup-if for some reason Collins were to retire in the coming months, this race would be upended, and I suspect people like Golden or the Pingrees would reconsider their opportunity to run here.

By my count, I can find six cases where this happened since 2006: Rhode Island-06, Oregon-08, Montana-06, North Carolina-08, Virginia-06, and Louisiana-14.  In these cases, incumbent senators led by 19-points (Chafee, RI), 18-points (Smith, OR), 24-points (Burns, MT), 17-points (Dole, NC), 31-points (Allen, VA), and 24-points (Landrieu, LA), but still ended up losing to the eventual challenger they were polling against.  In all of these cases, it appears a few things were at play that would benefit someone like Gideon were she to enter the race.

First of all, almost all of these candidates had name recognition gaps that they needed to overcome when running.  None of these people were governors or former senators, and other than Sheldon Whitehouse in Rhode Island, none held statewide office.  Three of them, like Gideon, were state legislators, and one (Jim Webb in Virginia) had never held elected office prior to going to the US Senate.  Secondly, almost all of these were states that were course-correcting to match a recent presidential race (where the incumbent's party lost) or were running on the same ticket as a winning Democratic nominee.  Rhode Island, Louisiana, and Oregon had gone for the eventual victor's party for years on a presidential level, and the state's natural inclination caught up with the incumbent, while Virginia and North Carolina were both proving what we'd learn in 2008-that a Democrat could win these states on a presidential level (Montana is a weird case, and kind of proves that occasionally people just end up liking a challenger a lot).  Third, almost all of these candidates were not considered the top choice of the nominating committee.  People ranging from Govs. Mike Easley & John Kitzhaber to State Auditor John Morrison to Rep. Patrick Kennedy were all heavily recruited, declined, and the parties settled for second, third, or fourth choice candidates that eventually won anyway.  Gideon was personally my top choice to run here, but some favored a Pingree or Golden, and if so, it's proof that you can win with someone who wasn't your first choice.  Finally, all of these races fell in a wave that was deeply unkind to the incumbent party of the senator; considering Donald Trump's approval ratings, this could be the case again in 2020, and in an era of a lack of ticket-splitting, could be what would ultimately causes Collins's numbers to falter (unless the Democrats nominate a total gadfly, she isn't winning by 22 points on the same ticket as Donald Trump).  So there is some, though not an enormous amount, of precedent for Gideon to beat Collins based on those polls.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)

2. Beating the Calendar

The second question was around whether or not Collins' lack of a proper challenger is a harbinger of doom.  Again, I'm going to look at every race since 2006 where a challenger beat an incumbent senator (open seats are a different beast), and see how often that challenger had not entered the race prior to June of the year prior to the election.

Since 2006, there have been 27 people who have beaten incumbent US Senators in a general election, and of them only eight had announced at this point during the cycle, with 19 announcing later in the year, frequently considerably later in our current year.  The most common time for candidates to announce successful candidacies is August-October of the year prior to the election, which accounts for 11 of these candidates, followed by February of the actual election year.  So while Democrats are impatient to get candidates in these races, and it's concerning that there have been so many high-profile declines, it's not a death knell for Gideon or someone else trying to challenge Collins.  The latest that anyone has successfully launched a campaign in that time is Rick Scott in Florida (April of the election year), which is admittedly an unusual case considering Scott's 100% name recognition as the sitting governor and easy ability to self-fund, but there's no reason to assume Gideon or another challenger couldn't make a race here against Collins, or even wait a few months without winning.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

3. Is Chuck Schumer Failing?

There's a difference between one race, though, and 2-3.  After all, a late-breaking candidate like Rick Scott is one thing, but Schumer noticeably doesn't have first or even second tier candidates in the three races that will decide the majority: North Carolina, Iowa, and Maine.  Fortunately for Schumer, there is a precedent to have three challengers-that-became-senators enter the race post-June, and it's actually more common than you'd think.  In 2006, future Sens. McCaskill, Webb, & Brown hadn't gotten in, and in 2008 five future senators were still waiting in the wings; 2014 and 2018 had similar circumstances, where 3+ challengers had yet to declare by June.  I think if we hit Labor Day without significant candidate movement in at least one of these states, Schumer could be in trouble but right now he's fine.  2014, in particular, felt like the sort of year where Republicans very much were in the same boat as Democrats in 2020, with serious eventual contenders in Alaska, Iowa, Colorado, and Arkansas all looking like the Republicans might struggle to win back the Senate at any point in Obama's time in office.  That of course changed between Memorial Day of 2017 and November of 2018, and it could be a repeat for Schumer.  That said, considering the bad press he's gotten in the past few months, it might be best for him to at least score one major recruit like Gideon to ensure perception doesn't become reality.