2020 United States Senate election in Maine
The 2020 United States Senate election in Maine was held on November 3, 2020, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Maine, concurrently with the 2020 U.S. presidential election, as well as other elections to the United States Senate, elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. This was Maine's first election for its Class 2 seat to use its ranked choice voting system. Because the first round of the general election saw a majority (51%), the instant runoff tabulation of more than 800,000 ballots was not carried out.
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Collins: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% >90% Gideon: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% Tie: | |||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in Maine |
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Republican Senator Susan Collins was challenged by Democratic nominee Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, as well as independent candidates Lisa Savage and Max Linn. Collins was considered one of the most vulnerable Republican senators due to her decreased polling numbers and perceived harm to her reputation but was reelected by an unexpectedly large 8.6% margin, with 51% of the vote to Gideon's 42.4%. Despite this, her 51% share of the vote was her worst performance since her first election in 1996 and was a 17-point drop from 2014. Maine was the only state to elect a senator of a different party than the winner of its presidential contest in the November 3 election, with Collins outperforming President Donald Trump, who lost the state to Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 9.1%.