The Challenge

Susan Collins’ reelection to the United States Senate was perhaps the most closely watched in the country in 2020. Democrats smelled blood with a goal of sweeping DC with a win for President, taking the Senate and keeping the House. 

All told, Maine’s US Senate race was in the top two most expensive races in the country. Susan Collins was outspent 2 to 1. 

To put this into perspective, roughly $9 per registered voter was spent in Collins’ 2014 race. This year?

On top of the dramatic outspending, Senator Collins had to deal with a massive increase in vote-by-mail operations due to the pandemic. Democrats historically have won vote-by-mail voters by a significant margin and this year was no different.

Already we were starting with a negative 10% margin going into Election Day.

Our Roll

Red Maverick Media served as Senator Collins’ mail vendor. Campaigns rely on direct mail, particularly in Maine with such an older population and less access to broadband. It is both cost effective and targeted. 

Our mail program contained three phases.

Phase 1

An absentee push wherein we mailed between 7 and 8 rounds of mail to low propensity Republicans (those who only voted in 1 of the last 4 general elections) and high propensity (very likely to vote) voters who were leaning towards voting for Senator Collins but needed reinforcing.

Phase 2 and 3

These were executed simultaneously, focused on persuasion to likely to vote swing voters and get out the vote efforts to Republicans. 

To our swing voters, we segmented out the voting population in a multitude of ways, including top issues as identified by modeling, region specific segmentation and county specific segmentation.

The Result

Susan Collins was elected with an historic margin of Republican and Independent turnout.

51.1%
9% margin

✅ Collins was elected to a fifth term by 9 points. 

✅ No Maine senator has been popularly elected five times. 

✅ It was a far cry from previous supermajority wins, but resounding after every public poll showed Gideon ahead. 

✅ Democrats had pinned their hopes of flipping the Senate on Maine, leading to more than $200 million spent on the race.