Part 1: the State Legislature
This diary is the second part in my series of analyzing the 2014 election results in Maine. My first diary analyzed the state legislative results. This diary will look at Maine’s two statewide races of 2014: the races for Governor and U.S. Senator.
Only one of these races was truly competitive. However, both races feature many interesting patterns in their results that demonstrate both larger trends and trends that were limited to either these particular candidates or this particular election. In Maine, more so than in other states, candidates matter, and that was clearly evident in these elections. I will also present some maps of these elections, to further illustrate these trends and allow accurate comparisons between elections to be made.
Follow me below the fold for my detailed analysis of these elections.
U.S. Senator
Legend:
Darkest blue: 80%+ for Democrats
Dark blue: 70-79.99% for Democrats
Normal blue: 60-69.99% for Democrats
Lighter blue: 55-59.99% for Democrats
Lightest blue: 50-54.99% for Democrats
Yellow: No candidate received an absolute majority of votes
Pink: 50-54.99% for Republicans
Normal red: 55-59.99% for Republicans
Brown: 60-69.99% for Republicans
Dark red: 70-79.99% for Republicans
Darkest red: 80%+ for Republicans
Gray represents towns won by independent candidates. White represents towns where no one voted. Green represents uninhabited townships.
Three-term Republican Senator Susan Collins cruised to an easy 68-32 re-election over Democrat Shenna Bellows, the former director of the Maine ACLU. This race was never competitive; the closest poll done in the race still showed Collins with a 19-point lead, and that was a YouGov poll whose methodology was questionable. Despite walking the length of Maine over the summer, and having some relatively good TV ads, Bellows’s campaign never really got traction, as Mainers overwhelmingly decided that Collins’ reputation as a moderate was good enough for them. Collins lost only six municipalities in the entire state: Portland, Bar Harbor (touristy college town), Hallowell (artsy town just south of Augusta), Monhegan Island (tiny island off the coast of Lincoln County), and two Indian Reservations: Indian Island (in Old Town) and Pleasant Point (right next to Eastport). Collins won the vast majority of towns in Maine with over 60 percent of the vote. Her 68 percent was a 7-point improvement over her 61-39 re-election in 2008. Her best county was (as it was in 2008 as well) Aroostook, as Collins was born in Caribou, and in addition, the Bellows campaign did not put much effort into Aroostook. Bellows’ best county was Cumberland, the largest county in Maine and home to Portland, where she received 38 percent of the vote. She received over 35 percent of the vote in only three other counties: Knox, Waldo, and Hancock. Bellows won only 5 or 6 state representative districts (out of 151) and only one state senate district (out of 35); all of these districts are entirely contained in Portland.
Here is a map of the swing between Collins’ 2008 re-election and Collins’ 2014 re-election. Since Collins did 7 points better in 2014, the colors are normalized around that. Collins gained less than seven points in blue towns, and Collins gained more than seven points in red towns. Only in the dark blue towns did Collins do worse than in 2008.
As the map shows, the places in Maine where Collins improved the most on her 2008 performance were in York County, plus the areas along the Androscoggin River in Androscoggin and Oxford Counties, and the St. John Valley in northern Aroostook County. As you will soon see, most of York County trended heavily Republican in 2014, so Collins’ overperformance there is not a surprise. She also improved dramatically in Biddeford, a working-class coastal town with a large Franco-American population. Biddeford is one of the only working-class coastal towns in Maine, and many working-class areas in Maine swung Republican in 2014, so it is not surprising that the remainder of the Maine coast did not swing to Collins anywhere near as much as Biddeford did. Biddeford is demographically similar to Lewiston, another town that swung heavily toward Collins in 2014. The towns north and northwest of Lewiston along the Androscoggin River up to Rumford, that swung heavily toward Collins, are also heavily working-class and have large Franco-American populations. It is clear that working-class and Franco-American voters swung heavily Republican in almost every race in 2014, however the reasons for this are more related to the gubernatorial election, so I will discuss that later.
Up in Aroostook County, the St. John Valley swung heavily toward Collins, while the rest of the county did not swing anywhere near as much. The simple reason for this is that the remainder of Aroostook has maxed out for Collins (Collins received over 80 percent in Aroostook excluding the St. John Valley), so she can’t improve much more there, while the St. John Valley is more Democratic, so Collins has more room to improve there (and improve she did, since Bellows didn’t put any effort into the area).
On the other hand, there are several regions of the state where Collins did not improve hardly at all from 2008, and in fact actually did worse in some towns. The major area where this happened was Down East Maine, and specifically central Hancock County. This is not a surprise, since Bellows grew up in this area, in the town of Hancock, so it makes sense that Bellows would get more support here than in other parts of the state. This home-region boost may have allowed Bellows to win Bar Harbor, the second-largest town in the state that she won. Bellows also did relatively well in the neighboring counties of Waldo and Washington. Washington was probably more influenced by Bellows’ being from Down East, while Waldo County has a stronger local Democratic Party that results in Dems having a higher floor in Waldo than elsewhere. In addition, many of the Democrats in Waldo and Hancock Counties are rural, socially-liberal, down-to-earth creative types, and Bellows is also that kind of Democrat. Bellows also limited her losses in three towns near Augusta: Hallowell, Manchester, and Winthrop. Bellows currently lives in Manchester, and both Hallowell and Winthrop featured strong, successful Democratic state representative candidates, thus probably exciting the base more. Hallowell is another of the towns that Bellows managed to hold on to, winning it by only 7 votes. Those towns are also more artsy and touristy, very different from the working-class towns where Republicans did well.
Governor
Legend:
Darkest blue: 80%+ for Democrats
Dark blue: 70-79.99% for Democrats
Normal blue: 60-69.99% for Democrats
Lighter blue: 55-59.99% for Democrats
Lightest blue: 50-54.99% for Democrats
Yellow: No candidate received an absolute majority of votes
Pink: 50-54.99% for Republicans
Normal red: 55-59.99% for Republicans
Brown: 60-69.99% for Republicans
Dark red: 70-79.99% for Republicans
Darkest red: 80%+ for Republicans
Gray represents towns won by independent candidates. White represents towns where no one voted. Green represents uninhabited townships.
Republican Gov. Paul LePage, after consistently polling about 2-3 points behind Rep. Mike Michaud, ultimately won a 48-43-8 re-election over Michaud and independent candidate Eliot Cutler. LePage won all but two counties – Cumberland and Knox, and he won Hancock by a grand total of nine votes. LePage dramatically outperformed the Republican baseline in Maine almost everywhere, but his overperformance was not uniform at all, and in fact was largely concentrated in the western part of the state. Cutler’s performance across the state was actually relatively uniform.
This next map, the percentage change in LePage’s performance from 2010 to 2014, will make the trends of his performance clear. LePage got about a ten-percent greater percentage of the vote in 2014 than he did in 2010, so the pink, red, and brown towns on the map are where LePage’s percentage of the vote increased by over 10 percent, and the blue towns are where LePage’s percentage increased by less than 10 percent. Only the towns in the darkest shades of blue saw decreases in LePage’s percentage from 2010 to 2014.
As the map above shows, LePage’s largest gains on his 2010 performance were in Oxford County, Androscoggin County, and the inland areas of York and Cumberland Counties. Clearly, the Republican wave hit this part of Maine the hardest, and Republican state legislative candidates also did unusually well in this area. But why did this area have such a large Republican swing? There are two reasons. First, Oxford and Androscoggin Counties are heavily working-class and have large Franco-American populations. In this area, even the normally-Democratic towns such as Rumford and Lewiston voted for LePage by double digits. And the reason for this is that LePage’s campaign focused heavily on issues such as immigration and welfare reform. While LePage’s relentless criticism of Michaud’s beliefs and votes on these issues may have been misleading or dishonest, there is no doubt that it was effective.
So why, then, did LePage not also dramatically improve on his 2010 performance in the other working-class areas of the state, such as the Millinocket area and the St. John Valley? The answer to this question has to do with parochialism. Michaud is from East Millinocket, and he had represented that area in the state legislature and Congress for over three decades. In addition, Michaud had represented a significant portion of Aroostook County in the state legislature, and he had always lived near Aroostook and paid close attention to it while in Congress. This is particularly important for voters in Aroostook, as The County (as it’s known in Maine) is frequently ignored by statewide politicians. Thus, Michaud held up much better in northeastern Maine than in Western Maine.
The inland areas of Cumberland and York Counties swung heavily toward LePage for a different reason. Michaud never represented that area in Congress, so he was already at a disadvantage there. Most of the First Congressional District, particularly areas along its long coastline, has a socially liberal culture that was always highly critical of LePage and the many controversial statements that he has made. Those coastal areas also supported gay marriage in 2012, while LePage was against it. However, the inland areas of Cumberland and York do not have that socially liberal culture, and that, combined with Michaud having never represented it in Congress, is why LePage did so well there.
There are two areas in Maine where LePage did unusually poorly compared to his 2010 performance. One is the aforementioned Aroostook County. The other, interestingly, is the area around his hometown of Waterville. Waterville is actually one of only two major towns (the other being Madawaska, in the St. John Valley) where LePage actually got a lower percentage of the vote in 2014 than in 2010. LePage did not do particularly well in the towns surrounding Waterville either. The clear explanation for this is that LePage did particularly well in this area in 2010, since it was his home area (he got 42 percent in Waterville in 2010, which is excellent for a Republican), and that the area was just reverting to form. LePage’s bounce in this area pretty much evaporated in 2014. This phenomenon, of candidates doing very well in their home region in their first major election and then doing worse the second time, is actually quite common, and it explains why Obama’s performance in Illinois in 2012 was so much worse than it was in 2008.
I hope this clears up some of the confusion about what happened in Maine last November. If you still have questions or comments about any of this, don’t hesitate to ask me in the comments.