After announcing in a Washington Post op-ed that she would not vote for then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016, Senator Susan Collins now tells the New York Times that it is “too early” for her decide whether or not to support the president for re-election. She has previously declared Trump “unworthy of being our president” and lacking “the temperament, self-discipline and judgment required to be president.”
The equivocation comes as her once bipartisan base is now skewed more heavily Republican after she voted to appoint Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in October.
Leading up to the vote, her potential choice to vote ‘yes’ to appoint Kavanaugh was described by some former Collins’ voters as the last straw, with many suggesting they would not support her re-election in 2020 if she were to vote for him.
A recent poll from the Morning Consult shows signs that these voters intend to keep their word. Collins holds a lukewarm overall approval rating of 45 percent, eight percentage points lower than her overall approval rating in a Morning Consult poll conducted prior to the Kavanaugh vote.
Her approval ratings among Democrats and independents have shifted drastically since her vote for Kavanaugh. Among Democrats, her approval dropped precipitously from 56 percent to 31. Support among independents for Collins slid from 56 to 41 percent.
However, among Republicans, Collins gained ground. Forty-seven percent of Republicans viewed her favorably in Maine before the Kavanaugh vote. Now, the percentage has risen to 68, a change that shows support for Collins has become increasingly more partisan and may be driving her indecision around whether or not to support Trump.
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