Hello and welcome to the Punch Bowl News Reback Podcast. Today I'm joined by Ali Muttnick,

our campaign reporter extraordinaire and my co-author on The Talley, our elections special

newsletter. We just sent out our first edition of 26, our second of the cycle earlier this

week on Tuesday. And there's a lot to talk about.

Allie, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me on the pod. No problem. Always a pleasure to have

a fellow campaign enthusiast on. And it was a busy jam-packed edition with lots of content.

Of course, we have a bunch of primaries coming up soon, but we're going to start

with the lead interview with Susan Collins of Maine, who officially launched her re-election campaign

just hours before the edition went live, so very good timing. Let's talk about Maine. It's going to be

one of the most expensive Senate races in the country. Susan Collins is going to be under a lot of pressure because it's a Democratic state.

But time and time again, she's won re-election despite Maine's blue tilt.

What's going to happen this time, Rand?

What are your takes?

And, of course, there's a messy Democratic primary that we have to get through.

There is.

I feel like people are really unsure of the Mills Plattner matchup.

The polling has been all over the place.

Plattner had an early lead in polling, maybe still does.

But Mills is a sitting two-term governor who is popular in state.

It's going to be fascinating to watch. But I think the last chess piece on

the board was Collins. And it felt like a fait accompli when she said, I'm going to run for

reelection. But we were internally wondering, you know, what if she decides to hang it up?

...