Susan Collins Re-Election Chances Nosedive After Support Erodes

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Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins is continuing to struggle amidst her attempt to get re-elected this November. In the wake of polling indicating that Democratic candidate Sara Gideon has more support than Collins in a one-on-one match-up between the two of them, Collins has now lost a major endorsement that she had during her last campaign in 2014. The group Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for gun safety measures across the United States, announced on Tuesday that it was endorsing Gideon after having endorsed Collins in 2014. John Feinblatt, who serves as president of the organization, lauded Gideon for having “walked the walk” on gun safety during her time in Maine’s state legislature.

Feinblatt insisted:

‘A vote for Sara Gideon is a vote against Mitch McConnell, who has made the Senate the place where desperately needed gun safety bills go to die.’

In fact, McConnell has proudly touted himself as the “Grim Reaper” of Democrat-led legislation like gun safety proposals. For example, the Democrat-led House passed a bill mandating universal background checks for gun purchases in the United States many months ago at this point, and McConnell and the rest of the Republicans in the Senate have refused to pass the measure.

In a Gallup poll from March 2018, a staggering 92 percent of respondents said that they approved of requiring background checks for all gun sales, when the requirement was described as a means to help prevent school shootings. A full 70 percent of respondents in that same poll said that they thought universal background checks would be “very effective” at curtailing the U.S. epidemic of school shootings, but Senate Republicans have refused to act anyway.

Meanwhile, Collins’s campaign is continuing to falter. In one recently released poll that had been conducted by a firm called Victory Geek, Gideon led Collins by a full 9 percent, and a full 79 percent of respondents overall indicated that they were “unlikely” to change their mind before the general election. A full 51 percent of respondents indicated that they supported Gideon, while just 42 percent said that they supported Collins, and 7 percent of respondents — who aren’t enough to boost Collins to a lead on their own — indicated they were undecided.