Talk Elections

http://bangordailynews.com/2013/04/03/politics/poll-cutler-would-lead-lepage-in-2014-governors-race-if-he-ran-as-a-democrat/

Lepage 36.5
Cutler 27
Baldacci 21


Lepage 33.5
Cutler 25.6
Michaud 22.8



Maine Democrats poll

Lepage 36
Michaud 33
Cutler 20





Not too bad for Mr. Lepage.

8) and thanks to Eliot Cutler!

LePage holding on would be a highlight of 2014.

And this is why I hate Eliot Cutler.

The same findings like those from PPP.

LePage would get killed though in 2-ways.

Cutler was beating Michaud and Baldacci though ???

Why don't the Dems just nominate Eliot Cutler?

Because he refuses to run in the Democratic primary.

I'm quite pleasantly surprised that, as of this early stage, Maine seems to be shaping up as roughly a Lean R race.

I understand why that surprise would be pleasant in a vacuum, but it isn't just Lean R, it's Lean Paul LePage. Paul LePage is one of those people whose fitness for office really should not be a partisan issue.

Will the Dems not withdraw?

Albeit not a good one.

Here's to Cutler running again!

What with this and Angus King, does Maine have a thing for independents that I just haven't heard of?

3-way races in FPTP elections are iherently unstable. As soon as one of the candidates gets behind, he tends to hemorrage votes. Early polls wouldn't catch it: nobody is - yet - convinced their prefered candidate has no chance. Sometimes, this uncertainty leads to a three-way all through the election day. But this is very hard to sustain for 2 elections in a row - especially in the face of the incumbent that would lose in a 2-way race to any opponent. Let the campaign dynamics play out. LePage would have to be VERY lucky, for something like this to be the next election result.

Yes. Eliot Cutler got over one-third of the vote and came in second in 2010. There was also an independent, Barbara Merrill, who got over 20% in the 2006 governor's race. Maine is the only state to have had more than one independent governor (King, and Jim Longley in the 1970s). Maine was also Ross Perot's best state in 1992. The Maine Green Party has consistently been the best-performing state Green Party in the country as well, having elected a State Representative in Portland for a while in the early 2000s and routinely getting close to 10% of the vote in gubernatorial races (though they didn't run a candidate in 2010 and endorsed Cutler instead).

It is safe to say that Maine is the most favorable state in the Union for non-aligned candidates.

Really, just do what we did with King in 2012. Don't fund our candidate.