Perhaps Mills wasn't such a bad candidate after all.
Moody’s actually turned out to be a sh
it candidate. Mills has done an excellent job uniting the left (her featuring Betsy Sweet whenever she can is certainly a positive in that regard), much better than I expected. Hayes running to the right also helped. She’s also come off really well in debates, making me wonder if she got some professional help there, as she was kind of sh
it at debates during the primary.
Moody has really failed to effectively attack Mills and her tenure as AG. He could’ve concern-trolled about her stance on water rights, which the tribes are still incensed about, and he didn’t. He could’ve accused her of politicizing the office in her vigorous battles against LePage, and didn’t. His entire schtick has been “muh taxes.” He's also become distracted by Hayes’s right-leaning candidacy, and now has to fight her off to keep from dropping even more.
Mills also runs more ads than Moody, and hers are (largely) positive — or at least I’ve seen her run positive ads, and I haven’t seen Moody run one.
So half of this is Mills being a better candidate than we thought, and the other half is Moody being an abysmal candidate.