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Robert W. Glover is an associate professor of political science and honors at the University of Maine. These are his views and do not express those of the University of Maine System or the University of Maine. He is co-leader of the Maine Chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network, which brings together scholars across the country to address public challenges and their policy implications. Members’ columns appear regularly in the BDN.
In 1996, in the thick of a competitive campaign, then-candidate Susan Collins said something we will hear a lot over the next several months: “I have pledged that if I am elected, I will only serve two terms.” She went on to defeat Joseph Brennan, whose long political career she argued had left him out of touch with Mainers. The pledge helped frame her as something different and the rest is history.
Thirty years later, Collins has announced she’s running for a sixth term. So will those words come back to haunt her? And do campaign promises even matter anymore?
Political scientists have studied this question for years. The short answer: yes — but only under certain conditions. That’s the kind of evasive answer academics love to give, so let’s unpack it.
First, the promise has to be clear. Researchers distinguish between “broad” promises and “narrow” ones. A narrow promise is easy for voters to judge as kept or broken. Think George H.W. Bush’s “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Collins’ two-term pledge fits this category. By contrast, a generic promise to “fight for hardworking Mainers” is almost impossible to assess.
Second, voters tend to react to broken promises in a limited way. Going back on a pledge can dent perceptions of trust or credibility. But it usually does not blow up a politician’s overall job approval. In other words, voters may think, “That wasn’t great,” without deciding the person should be cast out of office.
Third, incumbency matters. When voters already know a candidate well — their record, their style, their strengths and weaknesses — one negative fact doesn’t carry the same weight as it would for a newcomer.
Sen. Collins is a known quantity. Decades in the U.S. Senate mean that many voters already have a settled view of her. Research consistently finds that broken promises are far more damaging to upstart candidates or first-term politicians than to long-established incumbents.
Fourth, partisanship impacts how we process all of this. When a politician from “our side” breaks a promise, we tend to separate it from our broader evaluation. We might acknowledge it happened, but still ask: “Does she deliver for her constituents?”
That psychological move — separating the misstep from the full record — is common. So is rationalization: circumstances changed, seniority matters, Washington is complicated. We are all very good at explaining away inconvenient facts about people we generally support and like.
Put all of that together, and the research suggests Collins’ 1996 pledge is unlikely, by itself, to be the decisive issue in 2026.
But that’s not the same as saying it won’t matter at all.
Maine has a large share of unenrolled voters, and the state has never fit neatly into partisan boxes. Voters with weaker party attachments may be less inclined to shrug off a broken promise or rationalize it.
And this is an unusual political moment. Distrust of Washington is high. Anti-establishment sentiment runs deep. Ties to leadership and the Trump administration — once potentially framed as “experience” or “clout” — can just as easily be cast as evidence of being enmeshed in a dysfunctional system.
In a climate like this, a decades-old pledge can take on new symbolic weight. The research tells us broken promises usually matter at the margins. It does not guarantee those margins will stay small in a volatile political environment like this one.
In politics, broken promises rarely decide elections on their own — but in the right moment, they can become the story that voters use to explain everything else and make a sweeping change.
