2024 Leaner Deep Dive and Forecast: Maine's Statewide Electors (2 Electoral Votes)
Topic: 2024 Election Forecast
MAINE
Basic Election Facts
2024 Electoral Votes: 2
Population (2020 Census): 1,362,359 (+33,998 since 2010)
Likely Population at 2024 Election: 1,425,000
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Partisanship
Governor Party: Democrat
State House Majority: Democrat
State House Majority: Democrat
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Ethnic Demographics (2020 census)
White: 94.8%
Latino: 1.5%
Black: 1.2%
Other: 2.5%
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Presidential History since 1932
Times Republican: 13
Last: George H.W. Bush, 1988, +11.5%
Times Democrat: 10
Last: Joe Biden, 2020, +9.1%
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Presidential Election Characteristics
· Maine is the whitest state in America, edging out Vermont; joined by Nebraska, it is one of two states that splits its electoral votes, with one going to the winner of each of its congressional districts, and two going to the statewide winner.
· Maine and Vermont are the only two states to never vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt. The state voted for all but three Republican party nominees between 1960 and 1988, with 1912 going to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson thanks to a strong third-party challenge by Theodore Roosevelt.
· Democrat strength is clustered in the far southern end of the state, with Cumberland (23.7%) and York Counties (15.8%) combining for nearly 40% of the statewide ballot count in the 2020 presidential race. The northern part of the state, which falls into ME-2, is much more favorable for Republicans with a working-class agenda but splits its votes (Democrat congressman) and cannot regularly overtake the massive Democrat margin of Cumberland County (metro Portland), which dwarfs the next largest margin for either party by nearly 10%.
Looking Back
President Trump will win ME-2’s single electoral vote, most likely by at least 10%. Joe Biden will easily carry ME-1’s single electoral vote. You can read the individual summaries for both of those races here. The map showing the split between the districts is below:
Like most states, Maine’s likely inclination without rampant mail-in balloting and the accompanying ballot harvesting in 2020 was to tighten from its measly 3.0% margin in 2016. After Obama’s 17.3% blowout in 2008, the Democrat nominees had declined in votes in consecutive elections leading into 2020, with Trump 22,142 off Clinton’s 2016 mark, and then eclipsing it by 3,002 in 2020. When I accounted for third party votes (7.3% of the 2016 vote) returning to the two major party candidates, I found Biden scraping by with a win of just 1.4%, making Maine the second closest state nationally according to my model. This result was not only accomplished by blowing up the margins in York and Cumberland Counties, but by also scraping the bottom of the barrel in ME-2, which went to Trump, but by a decreased margin from 2016. Biden wound up carrying Maine by 9.1% in certified results.
Looking Forward
We are fighting over two electors here, which of course could spell the difference in a potential 269-269 tie, with a 271-267 decision for either side if all other conditions were met. This will come down to how the result in Cumberland County shakes out. That county, which contains metro Portland, makes Maine one of 18 states that Democrats control the electoral votes of with just a single county’s margin.
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Assessment
July 2, 2024
Polling and Modeling
· 538 expects Biden to carry Maine with 73% likelihood as of the time of this writing, and by an average of 5.3%.
· The Economist forecast has a similar projection, giving Biden a 70% chance of winning it, but projecting only a 4% margin of victory.
· Poll – April – Digital Research – Biden +2%
· Poll – April – Digital Research – Three-Man Race – Trump +1%
Party Registration Data
· Statewide
2020 Election: D+7.3% (+83,152 Democrat registration lead)
3/5/2024: D+6.3% (+60,021 Democrat registration lead)
· Cumberland County
2020 Election: D+22.2% (+60,150 Democrat registration lead)
3/5/2024: D+25.1% (+56,728 Democrat registration lead)
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Keshel Forecast
July 2, 2024
Biden +4-7%
Trump’s 2016 margin in ME-2 was 36,360. Despite a solid gain and coalition and registration shifts in his favor, Trump’s 2020 margin dropped to 27,996, whereas Biden inflated his margin from 58,390 to 102,331 in ME-1. If you ask me, I will have to guess the bloating in York and Cumberland Counties is the byproduct of ballot harvesting rings operating just down the Interstate in Boston, which also have duties in Rockingham and Hillsborough Counties, New Hampshire.
Accounting for ballot stuffing even in Trump-trending counties (11 of 15 counties have a GOP registration lean since 2020), I am looking at Trump getting back to a conservative margin of +34,000 in ME-2, which still lags his margin from 2016. If I’m off by 20%, then his margin is going to be slightly over 40,000 there, which I believe is overly optimistic given Automatic Voter Registration and an abundance of mail-in balloting.
The reason I’m not bullish about Trump taking Maine’s statewide electors is because of the five full counties down south in ME-1 (Kennebec is split), only one (York) has a Republican Party registration lean from 2020. The bloated, ballot harvested (legal in Maine, with restrictions that are certainly abused) margin in ME-1 was 102,331 for Biden four years ago. If that margin stands up 1:1, Trump would lose by 62,331 ballots even if he hit the 40,000 margin threshold. Cutting Biden’s margin in half in ME-1 would put it at 51,665, or still 11,665 over Trump statewide, putting it down to the wire but still shy.
Here are the last 5 margins (all Democrat wins) in Cumberland County (95.7% white): +29,462; +49,032, +44,129, +45,272, +69,175. That last number should show you just what flooding voter rolls and mailing ballots to the corresponding registrations (not all real, eligible voters) does to a statewide result. Cumberland is now 2.5% more Democrat in party registration than it was in 2020, and the highest Republican gain in net new votes in the past two decades is 6,841 for George W. Bush in 2004.
White liberals, who have no concerns for the fishing or timber industries, or the general fate of working-class citizens, are the kiss of death to a populist movement, and they are moving into southern Maine in droves from Massachusetts. There is one great hope for Trump to carry these two electoral votes, and that is the inclusion of a man on the ballot that Maine’s horrific Secretary of State, who tried to kick Trump off Maine’s ballot, has done everything she can to keep off.
Barring Kennedy’s inclusion, Biden will probably win the state between 4-7% in certified results.
How Trump Can Win
· Trump will need to run up the score in ME-2, although I’m not certain, given Maine’s steady demographics and entrenched white liberalism, he can get that number much over 40,000 in margin. He will certainly carry that district’s elector.
· Any and all rallies and funding in Maine should be focused on York and Cumberland Counties to dent those margins.
· Expend every resource to help Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., land on the ballot. He will rip away much of the white liberal youth vote and those of disaffected Democrats who think their nominee shouldn’t have dementia. That would devastate the margins in ME-1 and give Trump a shot at a tilt win - that is, if he could make it through one last safety called Ranked Choice Voting.
For all 2024 analysis, link To Captain K’s 2024 Electoral College Situation Room.