Cutler had the momentum on his side. polls showed him winning a lot of moderate republicans who thought LePage was too extreme. so, he was at 20-25% in polls and many democrats thought he was the only person able to defeat lepage and that mitchell would lose anyways so they decided to vote for cutler, who is actually a moderae democrat
That is misleading. Not a single poll showed Cutler getting significant Republican support. Polls showed LePage with a very unified Republican base, and Cutler getting support from unenrolled voters and centrist Democrats. It was the Democratic base that was disunited, not the Republican base.
For example, the final PPP poll showed LePage with the support of 71% of Republicans while Mitchell got the support of just 51% of Democrats. Unenrolled voters went 40% Cutler, 31% LePage, 17% Mitchell. Other polls earlier in the race showed a similar pattern, and since there were no exit polls, we don't know exactly what happened on Election Day.
Cutler cobbled together a coalition of unenrolled voters, moderate Democrats, and a few (not a "lot") of Republicans. In Maine, a partisan candidate having the support of 70% - 80% of their party is a fairly normal baseline of support.
In short, Cutler was competitive because Libby Mitchell was too liberal for independents and much of her own party, not because Paul LePage was too conservative. LePage did a better job holding his party together than Libby, and he had more appeal amongst independents.
Also, the title in Maine is "Secretary of State", not "Secretary of the State", so the acronym should be SOS.
