Talk Elections

Statewide:

40% Clinton
36% Trump
12% Johnson
  3% Stein

CD1:

50% Clinton
28% Trump

CD2:

48% Trump
34% Clinton


http://www.pressherald.com/2016/09/25/maine-voters-appear-poised-to-render-historic-electoral-college-vote-split-in-2016-election

CD 2 must be the reason why Maine has a insane governor?

The hard-working wood-chopping men up there absolutely seem to hate Hillary ...

I've always said that Maine would be more competitive than New Hampshire. Love it. :)

Color me unsurprised. Maine has the lowest postsecondary attainment rate in the Northeast, the lowest minority population in the country, and is the most rural state. It's a perfect fit, especially the part of the state outside the Portland metro, for trending R.

LOL. So Maine-02 is safe/likely Republican now?

It definitely leans republican at the very least.

So in 2012, Romney did better in CD2 vs CD1 by 6.2%.

In this poll, he's doing better by 20%.

What's going on here?  Is there that wide of a gap in educational attainment between the two districts?  Is there some sort of 2016 version of the Canuck letter being circulated by Trump's goons?

This is possible in a Trumpslide, but I have trouble seeing ME-02 spontaneously becoming as Republican as a Plains state. It could get there eventually, but I think that Trump winning there by double digits is wishful thinking.

The polls we're seeing this season are giving us an extremely incohesive map.  If Clinton's losing ME-2 by fourteen points, Georgia and Arizona shouldn't be anywhere close to being in play.  If Iowa's going to Trump by nine points, he should be ahead in Pennsylvania by at least 2.  "Battleground Utah" should never have been a thought.

So conventional wisdom suggests we should be headed for either a total Trump blowout or a total Clinton blowout.  But we're not.

In this election, ME-02 really appears to have become a lean-R EV.  However, I am skeptical that it will stay that way in a normal race with a normal R candidate; Trump just seems like a perfect fit for the district. 

I still think in the future, if the Dem can win Maine by a decent margin, like at least 8 points, they'll win ME-02 also.   I could be wrong, but I want to see it happen for more than one cycle before I'm convinced this isn't temporary.

In a world where White Men without a College Degree are second only to Black voters as the most partisan demographic group in the country, we're going to get some strange results.

Now we know why Hillary's not defending it =D

A 36-point difference between districts? That's just ridiculous.

That result, in and of itself, isn't hard to believe. Obama won ME-01 by almost that exact margin.

I meant the difference between the two. Edited to clarify.

I'm having a HARD time believing that Trump is 14 points ahead in ME-2 yet being over 20 points behind in ME-1

Very strange indeed.
I would say ME-02 could be Lean-R (at this time), so it's hard to believe he leads by +14.

I mean... ME-01 is basically the urban/well-educated district, while ME-02 might as well be a gerrymander for the Reps. I remember when I was putting together my "Hyper-polarized" map for Maine (don't judge me, I have a lot of spare time), it came out looking a lot like the actual map:

()()

(For the record, Obama still won both in 2008 :P)

Does anyone still think that ME-02 is more competitive than Maine at-large?

What is interesting about this poll is that Trump is running ahead of the GOP congressional candidates in both CDs.

Yes, because there's a chance that Hillary could win ME-02, although I'll admit that it seems unlikely right now. There's no way Trump is going to win the statewide vote.

There's no way a difference this large between the two districts can be explained by relative swings among different educational groups alone.  The two congressional districts are not that different; a good 40% of college-educated Mainers live in CD 2.

Getting a result like this just with educational swings would require college educated and non-college educated voters to each swing 30% in opposite directions, which clearly isn't happening.

This poll is off and/or there's something peculiar going on with CD 2. 

If the latter, what is it?  Has there been some political divide between the two CDs sparked by Paul LePage?  Something to do with the heroin epidemic?  Something going on in the French-Canadian community?  Some weird urban-rural divide?  Did Clinton do something to piss all of them off individually?

On November 8th, I expect ME-2 to vote as it does in most elections.

How is Trump winning an electoral vote in Maine?  I would expect that after tomorrow night's debate, Trump will tank.  Hillary should get every Obama state from 2008, except maybe Indiana.

I suspect the sample size is probably too small to draw any conclusions.

It's hard to see Trump winning ME-2 when normal Republican candidates have failed to carry it.

Somehow Trump has been leading in ME-2 for a while now...rural, white, less educated...it makes sense why he'd be doing well here.

Populations that are insular and homogeneous tend to be easily coerced into buying populist and bigoted campaigns.  People in ME-02 are probably concerned that their jobs will be stolen by refugees, which is charming, because it assumes that anybody would want to live there if they weren't already born there.

These people had their chance to prove that they knew better.  Instead, they re-elected Paul LePage.  The invisible hand of the free market will be guiding ME-02 with its entrepreneurial heroin dealers and blue collar job losses for years to come.

No it's not.

Also, [Inks] you, Ebowed.

Pretty simple, no?  Why would you vote for someone who repeatedly makes racist statements unless you lack exposure to people harmed by these comments?

As for elections having consequences, I should think that is a fairly uncontroversial sentiment.  Nobody is happy that rural Maine is suffering through difficult economic circumstances, and I would certainly propose they adopt an entirely different agenda to the one being enacted by their current government.  I'm not going to coddle a bunch of racists on a political forum because a few words are open to misinterpretation, or whatever is going on here.

Well, for one thing, areas, especially spooky scary non-urban areas, with higher minority populations statistically tend (to a certain point) to have more conservative whites...


Nobody is asking you to 'coddle' anybody.

Skills & Chance is on the money here....

ME-02 in many ways is similar to OR-04, although there is major difference in the presence of Eugene/Springfield, compared to ME-02 that is a bit more rural.

Both OR-04 and ME-02 have a large population of Working Class Whites, without higher degrees.

Both have a history of unionization of timber and paper mills in remote parts of the US.

Southern Oregon and Northern Maine have been abandoned by both major political parties for decades...

Southern Oregon has increasingly become a retiree location for working and lower-middle class retirees from throughout the state, as well as a few occasional California retirees in places like Medford and Grants Pass.

There are few decent paying jobs left for local residents, since most of the union mills have closed down, and retail and nursing jobs are all that is left.

Unlike Southern Oregon, tourism isn't that big a thing in ME-02.... it's way too far from metro areas of New England and the Northeast, and the vast forests of Northern Maine were long ago turned into corporate owned plantations now running 4th generation timber for pulp.

Obama won big up there, and actually overperformed Dem Pres results by huge margins in recent history.

Although the economy, employment, and wages might well be improving in major metro areas between '08 and '16, there is a huge swathe of small-town and working-class Americans that feel left behind.

I doubt that Trump is actually up +14 after Millennials break at the end of the day, and Maine proper is not at risk, but yes I think Trump will win this district by a decent margin against a Dem candidate that has done virtually nothing in her post-convention era to actually talk about the real issues that resonate very well with WWC voters, including ME-02.

Re point 1, that's generally due to a lack of integration, or in the South, longstanding cultural traditions. There is no question that the highest rates of xenophobia are in insular, lily white communities, as a lack of exposure can breed fear and ignorance.

As for coddling, what would the cavalcade of leftists jumping to the defense of racist voters suggest instead? I have to deal with racism and people making excuses for it everyday at work and I'm not going to be made to feel bad for an impolite post. I'm sorry if it offended you but I dislike your implication that I dislike these people or that I think they don't have valid interests. That doesn't mean I won't call out racism when I see it.

You certainly gave the impression that you did.

I think the idea that the content of what Trump is saying is connecting on an intellectual or ethical level is a misinterpretation of his appeal in areas like northern Maine. That's not to say that people who are voting for him aren't morally culpable for their emotional, instinctual, and tribal reasons for doing so, because those are definitely emotions that one shouldn't give in to and instincts and tribalisms that indicate ugly things, but to imply that there's some malign metacognition going into this is wrong-headed. It seemed like that was what you were doing, mainly because you were deploying a lot of the same tropes as IceSpear, who absolutely is doing that.

Brilliant argument. You sure told me, didn't you?!

Are you somehow still unaware that there are parts of the country in which Trump overperforms generic R, or are you just ignorant enough about the rural Northeast to not realize that northern Maine is one of them? If it's the latter, why would you comment on this?

That's...an odd argument/counterargument/defense/whatever, to say the least.

We have opinion polls of geographic areas such as this one. We also have crosstabs by demographics indicating that Trump polls very well among demographics like those that make up the population of said areas. We also have reams of breathless and to some extent self-fulfilling media prophecies about Trump's appeal to and 'common touch' with poor rural whites. All of which is more than enough to conclude that Trump is probably going to overperform generic R in certain areas until proven otherwise. I'm surprised that I have to point this out to somebody who's been on this forum for six years.

Data based on election results>data based on opinion polls>data based on assuming past trends will continue regardless of what opinion polls say.

Again, I don't see Trump winning ME-2 based on NORMAL REPUBLICANS losing it and I think a lot of people are way overestimating Trump like they did Todd Akin in the Missouri Senate race. It's called a difference of opinion. You think he'll win ME-2 big, I don't. Let's leave it at that.

Hillary is really expanding the map.

and conventional wisdom makes sense this year because...? tired of people trying to extrapolate polls from one state onto other states 🙄

I didn't say I thought he'd 'win it big'--I think he'll win it narrowly. All I said was that it's not 'hard to see' how he might win an area in which demographics would lead one to suspect he might do unusually well. If your issue is that polls showing him overperforming Generic R in areas like this might be overestimating him--which is reasonable enough, and which I'd love to agree with although I don't think I actually do--then you should have added that bit of information in the first place.

Why are a few posters flipping out that ME-02 is looking like it will vote for Trump this year?

Reality is that there are many parts of the US that have been left behind, despite the
Obama recovery after the Great Recession.

Despite Obama's popularity, there are still regions in the country suffering economically, and they are doing a typical swing-voter thing and rejecting the party in power.

I would also add Nevada to the ME-02 mix...

As I warned Red avatars during the primary season, using Oregon State maps, Clinton's biggest collapse in the Primary season between '08 and '16 was in her strongest counties in state, namely in Southern and Eastern Oregon, as well as historically union blue collar counties like Linn and Columbia.

Clinton ran as a candidate in '08 that ran in the Democratic Primaries with a focus on jobs and the economy.

At this point, she has made no argument to White Working Class voters as to why she is any better than Donald Trump on Jobs and the Economy.

A Democratic Presidential candidate should never allow that to happen, unless they are trying to lose the election.

haha why are people freaking out about this? this is a crosstab from a specious uni-polling firm lmao.

That's my point Dead Flags.... but Trump looks like he will win ME-02.

This is the evidence we have that points in that direction:
-a SUSA crosstab
-a wonky internal
-a UNH crosstab
-an Emerson crosstab
-a crosstab from some unknown firm with a bizarre name

SUSA is a solid polling firm but their crosstabs are notoriously terrible. I shouldn't have to explain why I don't trust the rest of these polls. Until we have more polling from reputable firms, rather than this assortment of trash, I don't buy that Trump is going to win ME-2 by more than 1-2 points. It's a tossup at worst.

Again: Clinton would compete here if her analytics team thought it was close. The alternative explanation (that it's a Trump blowout) would suggest a WV-sized trend to Trump. So I'm thinking that it's not close and that we've been mislead by junk polls. I might be wrong; we'll see.

If they are confident about Colorado (as they seem to be), ME-2 doesn't matter for the electoral math one bit.

People have to give credit to Obama for his achievement. He won Iowa twice convincing while Clinton is losing big there.

I think it shows how strong a candidate Obama was. It also shows how horrible a candidate Clinton is!

THANK YOU PEROT-VOTING LUMBERJACKS

Lots of denial in this thread.

Do most "normal Republicans" poll at 14% of the black vote?

It's a UNH poll...

Repeat after me:

ANGRY FRENCH-CANADIAN LUMBERJACKS

The huge difference between the two districts seems a bit crazy to me though. I will say that Trump has been doing consistently well in ME-2. I'd be inclined to give ME-2 to him at this point. Not sure about November though.

Portland is not in ME-2....

Yet Trump was campaigning there. ;D


That's fair, and I was probably even conscious of that when I wrote the original post- it came with extra salt, to be sure- but that is not a complete picture, only part of it, and I was blowing off a bit of steam there, but I think we're largely on the same page.

This.

Since when?  If Obama took Iowa twice, then there's no way Trump is getting it.

One thing to keep in mind is that just because a city isn't in a particular CD (or even state) doesn't mean that its entire TV market isn't.  Some major ME-02 towns like Lewiston and Auburn are in the Portland TV market.  Also, I think the Bangor TV market is so small that at least one of the stations largely simulcasts Portland TV news, instead of producing their own product.

I doubt Trump leads by 14... But I think it would be unwise to discount the preponderance of evidence that he is, at the very least, ahead by some amount here.

Bump....

So here we have it folks....

I called out ME-02 as a district that reminded me a ton of a mix of Southern and Coastal Oregon, obviously minus Lane County....

I called that ME-AL would be closer than ME-02.  Not sure I would have called Texas being closer than ME-02, though.

Well, although I didn't claim that TX would be closer than ME-02, I did state on many occasions that the vote in Texas would be much closer than many expected on the forum.

Additionally, I tried to call out the Red Avatars regarding ME-02 on multiple occasions, including on this very thread:

ME-02 in many ways is similar to OR-04, although there is major difference in the presence of Eugene/Springfield, compared to ME-02 that is a bit more rural.

Both OR-04 and ME-02 have a large population of Working Class Whites, without higher degrees.

Both have a history of unionization of timber and paper mills in remote parts of the US.

Southern Oregon and Northern Maine have been abandoned by both major political parties for decades...

Southern Oregon has increasingly become a retiree location for working and lower-middle class retirees from throughout the state, as well as a few occasional California retirees in places like Medford and Grants Pass.

There are few decent paying jobs left for local residents, since most of the union mills have closed down, and retail and nursing jobs are all that is left.

Unlike Southern Oregon, tourism isn't that big a thing in ME-02.... it's way too far from metro areas of New England and the Northeast, and the vast forests of Northern Maine were long ago turned into corporate owned plantations now running 4th generation timber for pulp.

Obama won big up there, and actually overperformed Dem Pres results by huge margins in recent history.

Although the economy, employment, and wages might well be improving in major metro areas between '08 and '16, there is a huge swathe of small-town and working-class Americans that feel left behind.

I doubt that Trump is actually up +14 after Millennials break at the end of the day, and Maine proper is not at risk, but yes I think Trump will win this district by a decent margin against a Dem candidate that has done virtually nothing in her post-convention era to actually talk about the real issues that resonate very well with WWC voters, including ME-02.

and

Why are a few posters flipping out that ME-02 is looking like it will vote for Trump this year?

Reality is that there are many parts of the US that have been left behind, despite the
Obama recovery after the Great Recession.

Despite Obama's popularity, there are still regions in the country suffering economically, and they are doing a typical swing-voter thing and rejecting the party in power.

I would also add Nevada to the ME-02 mix...

As I warned Red avatars during the primary season, using Oregon State maps, Clinton's biggest collapse in the Primary season between '08 and '16 was in her strongest counties in state, namely in Southern and Eastern Oregon, as well as historically union blue collar counties like Linn and Columbia.

Clinton ran as a candidate in '08 that ran in the Democratic Primaries with a focus on jobs and the economy.

At this point, she has made no argument to White Working Class voters as to why she is any better than Donald Trump on Jobs and the Economy.

A Democratic Presidential candidate should never allow that to happen, unless they are trying to lose the election.