Maine’s Tuesday presidential primaries were notable for low turnout in a state that typically votes as much as any state in the country, but there were still valuable lessons about the state of politics here.
Former President Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, but many in the party are skeptical. President Joe Biden’s strong primary performance may be deceiving on the national scale. And two major affordable housing projects went down, casting doubt on whether Maine can really solve its affordability crisis.
Here are four main takeaways from the Super Tuesday races.
It’s Trump’s party, but plenty of Republicans wanted an alternative.
Trump romped to a near-sweep of the 15 states voting on Super Tuesday, only losing Vermont — where Democrats can vote in Republican primaries and vice versa — to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who ended her campaign on Wednesday morning.
At that time, Trump had 72.5 percent of primary votes in Maine to 25.8 percent for Haley. That was almost smack dab in the middle of the former president’s margins across the Super Tuesday states. It was a disappointing performance for Haley given her Sunday rally here and is an example of Maine’s famously independent electorate looking more like everywhere else.
You can read this two ways. The Republican Party is Trump’s party, even in Maine, where the candidates vying to oust U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat representing the Trump-friendly 2nd District, are burnishing pro-Trump credentials. But more than 1 in 4 Republicans preferred someone else, meaning the party’s bet on Trump risks leaking swing voters in November.
Biden had a huge primary victory. It doesn’t mean much.
By one measure, Maine was actually Biden’s best performance on the Tuesday slate. He won more than 92 percent of votes here as of Wednesday, even when you include write-in votes as we do. This huge margin is partially a result of how the state counts its votes.
Most other states that voted this week allow people to vote “uncommitted” in primaries, a designation that has gotten attention recently because progressives have used it to indicate dissatisfaction with Biden’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas.
Maine does not do that. The number of blank ballots don’t come until the secretary of state’s office releases an official count, so it’s hard to gauge the size of any anti-Biden protesters. But we do know plenty about Biden’s vulnerabilities entering a high-stakes election with Trump.
The former president is unpopular, but Biden is more unpopular. He is losing to Trump in national polls and even one recent poll of Maine. This state reflects a wide enthusiasm gap. A University of New Hampshire poll last month found 53 percent of Maine Republicans enthused about Trump’s nomination versus 32 percent of Democrats for Biden. That spells trouble.
The two parties are deeply divided on the issues.
Since Maine looks nearly as polarized as the rest of the country, the relative salience of national issues over local ones in the upcoming election may be as high as ever. Exit polls showed a lot about the different universes that Democrats and Republicans are in.
Among the states holding Super Tuesday primaries, Democrats said abortion (28 percent) and the economy (25 percent) were the issues they are prioritizing most, according to Decision Desk HQ’s exit poll. Their attention is divided compared with Republicans, 44 percent of whom called Trump’s pet issue of immigration their top one, followed by the economy at 28 percent.
Democrats have proven durable in Maine over the last few cycles, cinching six straight years of full control of state politics in the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans seem to have an opportunity for incursions, but that also was true two years ago. It did not happen.
Affordable housing opponents “say the quiet part out loud.”
Two very different Maine towns rejected major affordable housing projects on Tuesday. The most notable one was in the wealthy Portland suburb of Cumberland, where a whopping 69 percent of voters rejected a 107-unit complex in the center of town. Kingfield also turned down a major workforce housing project that would have led to 27 apartments and 18 homes.
A resident opposing the Cumberland project quoted in the Portland Press Herald as saying “the income level was a bit low for the people we want to attract to town.” (The average value of a home is north of $664,000, 75 percent higher than the Maine average, according to Zillow.)
“When NIMBYs [an acronym for “Not In My Back Yard”] say the quiet part out loud …. ,” Eamonn Dundon, the advocacy director at the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The affordability crisis of the last few years has driven reforms at the state and local levels. There are positive signs, including that Maine is leading the region in permitting new units. But Maine needs at least 76,000 new homes by 2030 to meet current and future demand, according to a landmark state study released last year.
The reality is that Maine will never build that many units if voters decide to keep development out. In the short run, developers may avoid these towns and build elsewhere. But pushing them from town to town is costly and inefficient and makes it harder to address our problems.