New Hampshire may have a reputation as the state of stubborn individualists, but in 2020, it was Maine who was the black sheep, not only when compared to its New England neighbors, but to the country at large. It became the only state in either 2016 or 2020 to simultaneously cast its electoral votes for one party while electing a Senator from the opposite party (Joe Biden and Susan Collins, respectively), and was also the only state with two congressional districts whose individual districts split their vote for president. In any of the other two districted states (at the time, Rhode Island, Idaho, Hawai, and New Hampshire), this would’ve been of purely academic interest – but because, like Nebraska, Maine awards the winner of each of its congressional districts one vote, it meant that Biden had to settle for winning only three of a possible four electoral votes, while Donald Trump came away with a one vote from the state’s Second Congressional District.

One of the explanations for this peculiarity is that, unlike ostensibly similar states such as Vermont and New Hampshire, Maine’s population is less educated – in fact, it’s the only New England state to place outside of the top 15 in terms of percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree. Take into account that it also happens to be the whitest and most rural state in the country, and you have the makings of an electorate prone to vote for Donald Trump’s Republican Party. But unlike most states with a similar population profile, white voters in Maine simply tend to be more liberal, as evidenced by Biden winning a clear majority of them in 2020. However, those liberal voters also happen to be concentrated in the cities and suburbs of the state’s southern First District, while the less educated and more rural voters make up the bulk of the northern Second District, explaining the split in electoral votes. Complicating things for Democrats is that the Second District has become more Republican leaning faster than the First District has become more Democratic leaning.

Needless to say, the Pine Tree State has always had an independent streak – it elected two third party governors in the 20th century, eventually sending one of them to the Senate (incumbent Angus King who, unlike fellow New England independent Bernie Sanders, had to face both a Democratic and a Republican opponent in his 2018 reelection bid) and was one of two states where Ross Perot finished second in 1992. As such, one might expect independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or another third party candidate to be able to eat into Kamala Harris’ Maine margin and potentially throw the entirety of the state to Donald Trump. However, there are two complicating factors to a third party candidate’s quest for relevance (and Trump’s quest for a Maine victory). 

The first is that there are actually fewer independents in Maine than there have been in the past – for the first time in three decades, both Democrats and Republicans outnumber “unenrolled” voters in the state, indicating that Vacationland voters are taking a side and sticking with it, even as both major party candidates are underwater in terms of favorability.

Considering that Democrats now have the party registration edge, this trend favors Harris. But even if another candidate were able to drag down the president’s percentage of the vote, there’s still no guarantee it would ultimately be to Trump’s advantage. This is because of the implementation of ranked-choice voting in Maine. Under ranked-choice voting, any election that ends with no candidate receiving a majority of the vote is retabulated while eliminating the smallest vote receiver. In other words, Maine voters don’t just vote for one person for president – instead, they rank every candidate by order of preference, and if none of the candidates receives 50% of the vote in the first round of balloting, the lowest performing candidate is eliminated, and the votes of those voters who ranked that candidate first and redistributed to their second choice, and so on and so forth. Ranked-choice voting instead serves to buoy the naturally favored party from hemorrhaging disaffected voters, and in Maine’s statewide race, that’s the Democrats.

Could this voting system benefit Trump in a close election? Hypothetically, yes, but given that Democrats already enjoy a registration advantage, it stands to reason that even those voters who cast an initial vote for an independent candidate would still rank Harris higher than Trump, eventually giving the president at least three of the state’s four electoral votes. So even though Trump is heavily favored to win Maine’s Second District, the likelihood of him pulling off a statewide upset remains slim. But thanks to Maine’s various quirks, no election held within its borders can ever truly be boring.