AUGUSTA, Maine — Mainers are increasingly living in different realities according to their political affiliation, with little consensus on key issues from who is likely to win a toss-up presidential election to the condition of their household budgets.
Those findings in recent rounds of polling by the University of New Hampshire are a symptom of a long trend of national polarization. Since the late 1970s, the U.S. has divided more along political lines than Canada, the United Kingdom and six other Western countries examined by economists at Stanford and Brown universities as part of a 2020 study.
The trend is being observed in politically divided states such as Maine and New Hampshire and also in more monolithic states like the Democratic-dominated Vermont. It comes with major implications. Political parties and figures are increasingly catering to bases that are narrowing ideologically and often do not even agree on the major problems facing society.
“Everybody thinks they have a chance, so it’s go-for-broke politics,” Andrew Smith, a UNH political scientist who runs the polling center at the school. “The way to win elections is to speak to your base and get them angry and riled up to get them to the polls.”
Democracy Project
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Some of the figures in recent UNH polls are stark. When asked in August who would likely win the November presidential election, 81 percent of likely Maine Democratic voters said Vice President Kamala Harris while 86 percent of Republicans said former President Donald Trump.
In reality, the race is a virtual coin toss. Decision Desk HQ, the Bangor Daily News’ national election results partner, was giving Harris a 56 percent chance of winning as of Friday. That matches the narrow majority of Maine independent voters who said Harris was likely to win.
Perceptions of the economy differ just as dramatically. In a survey released last week, 90 percent of Republicans said their household financial situation was worse than it was a year ago. Yet only 14 percent of Democrats said so, with a third saying they were doing better.
Political affiliation also almost entirely governs how people see Maine’s direction, which has been controlled by Democrats at the state level since 2018. Three-quarters of Democrats think the state is on the right track, while 85 percent of Republicans think it is on the wrong one. Only 2 percent of Republicans expected business conditions to be good here over the next year.
The same August poll found that 3 in 10 voters think Maine’s biggest problem is housing, which far exceeded cost of living, the No. 2 response at 11 percent. But only 7 percent of Republicans cited housing as their top issue, with 23 percent saying it was costs, 13 percent saying the left or leftist politicians and 7 percent saying immigration.
This election is colored by a tumultuous four-year period. That runs from Trump’s false insistence of a stolen 2020 election that inspired the U.S. Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, to a July assassination attempt against Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. Harris took over the Democratic ticket when President Joe Biden ended his run that month due to concerns about his age.
Over the long term, the Brown and Stanford researchers found that the rise in polarization could be tied to the rise of partisan cable news that is unique to the U.S., changes in party composition and increased racial division. It argued against the rise of the internet as a driver of polarization, which actually dipped in other countries that have adopted it at a similar rate.
Smith, the UNH pollster, expects that the electorate will hear a lot about issues through Election Day but said he thinks the deciding factor will be what Democrats and Republicans tell their bases. The result could be that problems become even more difficult to solve over the long run.
“The polarization is not uncommon,” Smith said. “The thing I think is uncommon is these surveys in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont point out that even our perceptions of the world, the economy, are colored by partisanship.”
