Our state, with only two congressmen and four electoral votes, is usually ignored in national politics, but not this year. With the presidential race in a dead heat – and the Congress narrowly divided – both parties have been spending madly on advertising here, while the President, his wife, daughters, dad, and running mate have stumped here in recent months. Neither party can afford to take any swing state for granted.
But for almost a century in the late 19th and early 20th century, Maine had a central role in national elections, with influence far exceeding that of its population. That’s because until 1960, Maine held its elections for all offices except the Presidency in September, nearly two months ahead of most of the nation. Before the advent of scientific polling, the results of Maine’s early elections were regarded as a powerful political barometer for the mood of the nation at large. “As Maine goes,” it was said, “so goes the nation.”
When Maine became a state in 1820, it was one of several states that chose to hold their state elections in September or October. With poor roads and a far-flung population, Maine, Vermont and the frontier states of Ohio and Indiana held their polls in the early fall, for fear the chill of winter would depress turnout. For the next 20 years, Maine was just one of this early bird pack, which also included several southern states.
But the 1840 election changed that. In September, Mainers turned out the Democrats, who had led the state to independence from Massachusetts, in favor of the Whigs, who had taken a strong stand against slavery and the United States’ opportunistic war with Mexico. Party pundits were shocked when the rest of the nation followed suit in November, electing Whig William Henry Harrison over President Martin Van Buren (D) by an enormous margin.
From then on, Maine was regarded as a political weathervane for the northern states. The state basked in the national spotlight, with national newspapers giving detailed coverage to Maine’s early bird elections, even analyzing races for the state legislature. Campaigns spent inordinate sums of money here, and national political figures showed up to influence the results of September elections.
By 1880, the Mainers’ influence was so great that their decision to turn out a corrupt Republican governor in favor of a Democrat was greeted with hysterics from New York editorialists, who saw the decision as a treasonous endorsement of the old Confederacy, then the Democratic stronghold.
“In the result of the Maine election,” the New York Times warned, “defenders of the lost rebellion imagine [they will gain] through the ballot box that triumph that their political brethren failed to secure with their cartridge box during four years of war against the Federal Government.” Maine voters, the Times concluded, were colluding with those “who rejoiced over reverses of the Union armies and mocked at the calamity which befell the country when Lincoln was assassinated.” Political analysts of the day credited the Maine vote with rallying the country to Republican Garfield in the Presidential election that year.
After 1880, Mainers continued to elect GOP candidates to most state and national offices for the next 30 years, but by shrinking margins. Then, in the off-year election of 1910, Mainers put another Democrat in the Blaine House, setting off another flurry of media speculation. President Taft’s reelection bid in 1912 was in serious trouble, it was said, if his party could lose in “rock-ribbed Republican Maine.” Indeed, Taft lost the election to Woodrow Wilson, despite taking the time to motor up to his brother’s Biddeford Pool summer home on Maine’s election day.
Although Maine was now the only state to hold early elections, its ability to predict the winner was becoming less sure. When Mainers voted Republican in September, 1916, London bookies made Charles Evans Hughes (R) the odds-on favorite for President; they must have been pretty upset with us in November, when Americans reelected President Wilson. In 1932, Mainers voted for Republican candidates, while the nation went for Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a landslide. Four years later, Maine and Vermont were the only states to vote against FDR, leading his campaign manager, James Farley, to decree: “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.”
Mainers were also beginning to question the wisdom of holding early elections. Holding two ballots instead of one was costing the state an extra $50,000 to $60,000 in 1936, when a new home cost less than $3000. The September elections also coincided with farmers’ second hay harvest and, in some years, heat waves had played havoc with the civic process, overwhelming speakers and thinning out crowds.
The nation’s political alchemists were increasingly turning to a new crystal ball: scientific political polls. “In recent years many newspapers and periodicals have conducted canvasses of this type,” Columbia University professor Claude Robinson decreed in 1936. “When they have employed the best methods, their reports have been trustworthy…. The early Maine returns offer no practical forecasting help that cannot be had by simpler means.”
Professor Robinson, who later co-founded the Gallup organization, may have had his own fish to fry. In any case, the Maine Senate disregarded his advice, and in 1937 rejected a resolution stating “the state has no more use for the September election than a hog [has] for a cyclone.” Subsequent efforts to move the election to November were stymied in the legislature until 1957, when it voters changed it themselves in a ballot referendum.
At this writing, Maine appears to be reflecting national polls in our current election season, with the two candidates in a statistical dead heat. Turnout may decide this one, so if you still believe in Maine’s predictive qualities, get yourself out to the polls.
Colin Woodard is the author of The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking). He lives in Portland and has a website at colinwoodard.com.