Daniel M. Shea is the Marson-Muller-McNulty Professor of Government at Colby College. His most recent book, with co-author Nick Jacobs, is “The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America.”

In the coming weeks we’ll learn a lot more about Troy Jackson’s take on federal policies, and how they might stack up with voters against Sen. Susan Collins. But before we get there, let’s look at a few key geographic trends.

For a decade, the narrative surrounding Maine politics has followed a predictable script. Pundits and campaign consultants look at the map and see two states: an urban and suburban coastal south that has become increasingly Democratic, and a vast, rural interior that trends steadily Republican. In statewide elections, Democrats need to run the table in Cumberland and York counties, while Republicans rely on huge margins across the 2nd Congressional District to balance the scale.

When Sara Gideon challenged Susan Collins in 2020, that suburban-focused strategy fell short. Gideon ran up impressive margins in greater Portland but was overwhelmed across rural Maine — losing Aroostook County by more than 42 points — while watching traditional ticket-splitters in York, Sagadahoc and Lincoln counties break for Collins.

That’s why Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from Allagash in northern Aroostook County, offers Democrats a potential path to victory. The challenge is to leverage his rural blue-collar roots to rewrite the electoral geography that has defined recent Maine elections.

To understand why Jackson’s profile matters, we have to know the three data-driven pillars of a competitive statewide campaign in Maine.

First, Democrats have to stop the bleeding in rural areas. In 2020, Susan Collins turned rural Maine into an electoral fortress. The numbers were staggering: she carried Aroostook County by 42 points, Piscataquis County by 43 points, Somerset County by 41 points and Washington County by 36 points. Sure, there are fewer people in these counties, but those figures were as staggering as they were unprecedented.

In town after town along the St. John Valley, traditional Democratic working-class voter bases eroded. Collins carried northern mill towns, which used to lean left, by huge margins. The rural GOP wave my colleague Nick Jacobs and I wrote about in “The Rural Voter”  was made vivid in northern Maine. Between the 2016 and 2024 presidential cycles, towns like Madawaska saw a 19 percentage-point swing toward Republicans, Frenchville swung 20 points rightward and Baileyville in Washington County shifted 19 points toward the GOP.

For Jackson, who built his political identity organizing timber truckers and working in northern forests, the goal isn’t to win rural townships outright. It is about margin compression. If he can trade a 42-point blowout in Aroostook for a competitive 10-point margin — reclaiming some working-class voters in places like Madawaska, Fort Kent and Van Buren — he’ll net thousands of votes that previous Democratic nominees left on the table.

Second, winning back rural working-class voters gives Jackson only half the coalition. Completing it requires reclaiming coastal ticket splitters, where thousands of voters comfortably support state-level Democrats while simultaneously pulling the lever for Susan Collins.

Conventional wisdom treats coastal Maine as guaranteed blue territory, but recent Senate results prove otherwise. In 2020, outside of Cumberland County (+17% Gideon) and Knox County (+2% Gideon), Collins carried almost the entire coastal belt: taking Sagadahoc by nearly 4 points, York by 5 points, Hancock by 6 points and Lincoln by 9 points.

What makes this coastal vulnerability so intriguing — and ultimately winnable — is that these same communities are undergoing a pronounced leftward shift in presidential elections. Between 2016 and 2024, towns like Wiscasset swung nearly 18 points Democratic, Topsham moved 14 percentage points leftward and Yarmouth in Cumberland County surged to a whopping 56% Democratic margin.

The electoral opportunity for Jackson lies directly in that tension. The voters in these coastal towns reject national Republican platforms. To beat Collins, Jackson’s challenge is to close the ticket-splitting gap, proving that his brand of blue-collar populism resonates just as strongly with suburban families as it does with northern loggers.

Finally, no Democratic candidate can win in Maine without maintaining a big turnout in Cumberland and York counties, which represent the bulk of the state’s vote total. In 2020, Sara Gideon carried Cumberland County by over 30,000 votes. Jackson needs an even larger margin to build a winning statewide coalition.

The challenge for a blue-collar populist like Jackson is ensuring that his strong appeal to labor unions and rural voters translates to affluent, suburban communities like Scarborough, Cumberland and Falmouth.

In Scarborough, for instance, Democratic margins jumped 15 percentage points between 2016 and 2024, reaching +32%. Maintaining high suburban margins while simultaneously competing in Aroostook and Washington counties forms the dual engine required for a statewide victory. That’s no easy trick.

A Democratic pickup in a rural, split-ticket-prone state like Maine requires more than standard partisan mobilization. It demands a candidate who can speak authentically to loggers in The County, paper mill workers in Skowhegan and suburban families in Freeport. It requires the old-school hard work of voter persuasion.

As I’ve written in previous op-eds, Susan Collins will be a formidable opponent. She is widely known and well-liked across the state. But Jackson’s political identity offers a rare bridge across Maine’s geographic and cultural divide. By cutting into deep rural deficits, winning over coastal split-ticket voters and holding the southern suburban base, he might just represent a path to victory built not on dividing Maine, but on unifying it.