Not a joke: President Joe Biden is in a historically bad position entering a high-stakes November rematch with former President Donald Trump.
For example, a Gallup poll spanning his third year in office measured his approval rating as the second-worst in presidential history at that time, lagging only Jimmy Carter ahead of his landslide 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan. Downstream effects have shown up in the states as well.
A February poll here showed Trump ahead of Biden. This week, a poll conducted in April was released by the Maine firm Digital Research Inc. that had Trump ahead of Biden until a ranked-choice count put the Democratic incumbent narrowly ahead.
No Republican presidential candidate has won Maine since 1988. Trump still looks like an uphill pick against Biden. Nonetheless, the polls have ginned up his party, which has been on a losing run at the state level since Gov. Janet Mills and Democrats took control of Augusta in 2018.
The Maine Republican Party noted the “new” poll — without mentioning that it was months old — in a fundraising email on Friday from Jason Savage, the party’s executive director.
“For weeks we have been telling you Maine could deliver not just one, but three electoral college votes for President Trump in November,” the email read.
Maine gives one elector to each winner by congressional district and awards two to the statewide winner. Trump was the first president in the modern era to split our electoral votes by taking the one elector from the conservative-leaning 2nd District in 2016. He did it again in 2020, but he has never gotten close to winning the whole state.
A statistical model from our election results partners at Decision Desk HQ gives Trump a 92 percent chance to win the 2nd District in November. But Biden has a 99 percent chance in the liberal 1st District. It adds up to a 67 percent chance for the president to win Maine, according to the model, which takes more than 200 unique measures into account.
Given Maine’s history, this is pretty good for Trump. A 67 percent chance is only a little greater than a toss-up. It’s about the same as the chance of an NFL kicker making a field goal from 50 yards or more. FiveThirtyEight gave Hillary Clinton a slightly higher chance of beating Trump in 2016. (How did that race work out?)
But we haven’t seen new Maine figures in a long time. These polls came before Trump was convicted in his hush-money trial in New York, which was the first verdict to drop in his string of legal cases that will play out through the year. Nationally, Biden has slightly tightened the race with Trump since the winter, according to polling averages.
We’re just getting started in Maine. If these figures hold, the presidential race will be a loud one here. There would be lots of effects down the ballot if Trump pulled off a win. But that’s a big “if” at that point with history showing a hard path to beating Biden here.
