📊 The governor was further in front of her rival in the first public poll since the spring.
â—‰ Mills had 49 percent support to LePage's 38 percent in an early-September poll of 814 likely Maine voters taken by the progressive Maine People's Resource Center, a sister group of the Maine People's Alliance. The margin of error was 3.4 percent.
â—‰ This is the first public poll since the spring, when Mills was only just ahead of LePage and within margins of error. We will need more polls for a solid grasp on the direction of this race, but this is a datapoint that tracks with Democratic gains nationally since earlier in the year.
â—‰ The poll found that the Supreme Court's decision to end abortion rights made 62 percent of Maine Democrats more likely to vote. The decision had no effect on plans to vote for 65 percent of Republicans in another sign of an enthusiasm bump for a majority party that desperately needed one.
â—‰ We would like to see surveys come from more neutral groups, but the Maine People's Resource Center had a solid record in the last decade. It has a B/C grade from FiveThirtyEight for work conducted through 2016.
💻 Maine's House members voted for a bill blunting a federal workforce purge suggested by the former president.
â—‰ Both Golden and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from the 1st District, backed a measure led by their party to prevent presidents from coming up with new federal job classifications without approval from Congress. It passed the House on Wednesday largely along party lines.
â—‰ It is a response to a plan from former President Donald Trump in late 2020 to reclassify tens of thousands of federal jobs into policy positions that would allow for political rather than career appointments. While it was never implemented because Trump lost the election, he has teased plans to bring it back if he runs and wins the White House again in 2024.
â—‰ Democratic senators are trying to rally support for a similar bill, but the chamber's 60-vote threshold will be an obstacle. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, could be in play on it, saying she would "oppose blatant efforts to politicize the civil service." |
|
