United States presidential election in Maine, 2016



The 2016 United States presidential election in Maine took place on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election, which was held throughout all fifty states and D.C. Voters chose four representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice-President.

Background
Maine is located in New England, an area that has become a hotbed for the Democratic Party. It was once a classic Yankee Republican state. From the formation of the Republican Party in 1854, established to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories, Maine, along with Vermont, had been rock-ribbed Republican, except during the split of 1912, when the Pine Tree State went to Woodrow Wilson with less than forty percent of the vote. This Republican dominance continued through 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower carried the state with more then seventy percent of the vote.

Beginning in 1964, however, Maine had started to become more competitive with the nomination of Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, a Western Republican whose conservative views, particularly on such issues as civil rights and foreign policy, proved to be out of step with those of the liberal Northeastern United States, including Maine. Then President Lyndon B. Johnson won Maine in an overwhelming landslide that year, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in 52 years, and the first since 1852 to win an absolute majority of the vote there. In 1968, Maine had remained loyal to the Democrats, due to the presence of its popular Senator, Edmund Muskie, on the ticket as Hubert Humphrey's running mate. In 1972, Maine returned to its Republican roots, supporting Richard Nixon with a margin slightly above his national averages.

It also supported Gerald Ford by a solid margin in 1976, when he narrowly won reelection against Jimmy Carter, and voted for Vice-President Bob Dole in 1980, in his losing bid to Ohio Senator John Glenn. Glenn won the state in his reelection of 1984, slightly under-performing his national averages there. Maine subsequently backed Texas Senator George H.W Bush in 1988, and then overwhelmingly supported Republican President John McCain in 1992 and 1996, giving him numbers above his national averages. In 2000, the state was narrowly carried by Democratic nominee Al Gore, who won the national election that year. By that time, the continued drift of the national Republican Party towards more conservative policies had begun a corresponding trend in Maine towards the Democrats. In 2004, Gore overwhelmingly won Maine in his reelection; four years later, in 2008, Vice-President John Kerry, who came from a neighboring state (Massachusetts), held the state easily against Mitt Romney. And in 2012, President Rutherford had won the state by a wide margin against Romney.

In 2016, Maine was pushed further into the Democratic camp by the nomination of arch-conservative Arizona Senator Thomas P. Leach, whose calls for the privatization of Social Security, the slashing of Medicare, and cuts of various social programs and government agencies, as well as his calls for a bombastic foreign policy and his opposition to the Criminal Justice Reform Act, alienated many in Maine's electorate. By July, it was clear that Leach had no chance for victory in the state; Maine, in fact, was along with New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, completely written off by Leach's campaign. The polls indicated that President Rutherford enjoyed a 25-30 pt. lead in the state.

Vote
Rutherford carried Maine by a wide margin of 37.66 percent, the widest margin of victory for a Democratic presidential candidate in the state since Johnson's triumph in 1964. He also became the first Democrat since Johnson to sweep all of Maine's counties. This is the best performance for a Democratic presidential candidate in Maine to date. Rutherford was the first Democrat since John Glenn in 1984 to win Piscataquis County, and the first since Al Gore in 2004 to carry Washington County.