Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: With Angus King dominant, we move the race to 'Likely I'

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' ME-Sen: Critical Insights for the Portland Press Herald. 6/20-25. Registered voters. MoE: ±4% (no trendlines):

Cynthia Dill (D): 7
Charlie Summers (R): 27
Angus King (I): 55
Undecided: 9

This is the second poll we've seen of the Maine Senate race since the state held its primaries, and the results are very similar to those MassInc published earlier in June. The bottom line is that former Gov. Angus King is not only crushing, but he's become the de facto Democrat in the race, as you can see from Cynthia Dill's painfully low share of the vote. Yet King still retains sufficient crossover support to suppress Republican Charlie Summers' performance, putting him in a commanding position for November.

This contest feels like an enantiomer of the 2006 Connecticut Senate battle; here, Dill's playing the role of Alan "Gold" Schlesinger, who simply couldn't peel enough Republican votes away from the newly-independent Joe Lieberman to give Democrat Ned Lamont a fighting chance in the general election. Given this serious structural obstacle that Summers faces'not to mention King's dominance in the toplines'Daily Kos Elections is changing our rating on this race from Lean I to Likely I.