If you believe the polls, then Ed Markey probably won't be a sitting U.S. senator next year.
The incumbent Democrat, who has been in the Senate since 2013, and in Congress since 1976, faces a tough primary challenge from U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III (D-Newton). Although they agree on virtually every issue, Kennedy has the most famous name in American politics. He led the incumbent 58 percent to 42 percent in a May 2020 Emerson College poll.
Maine Republicans want to repeal ranked choice voting, but their effort this year appears to have failed.
The party gathered more than 72,000 signatures for a ballot initiative that would ask voters in November to get rid of ranked choice voting for the presidential general election, but the Maine Secretary of State declared around 11,000 of those signatures invalid. That left Republicans with about 61,000 certified signatures, about 2,000 short of what they would have needed to get the measure on the ballot.
