President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump square off Thursday evening in the first debate of their rematch.
For many, it is not a tantalizing matchup. The Democratic president and his Republican rival have favorability ratings in the low 40s nationally. A quarter of Americans had unfavorable views of both in a February poll from the Pew Research Center. That was before Trump’s conviction in his New York hush-money trial, the first verdicts in a slew of cases against him.
The situation looks similar in Maine, which has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 but saw Trump win the one elector from the 2nd Congressional District in 2016 and 2020. A model from our national election results partners at Decision Desk HQ give Biden a 66 percent chance of winning Maine, while Trump is a 92 percent bet in the 2nd District.
Yet one poll of Maine this spring showed Trump six percentage points ahead of Biden statewide, while another had the former president up until the state’s ranked-choice voting system put the president ahead.
Since 2014, the only Republican to win a statewide majority was centrist U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who won big in the 2nd District and stayed competitive in southern Maine to win reelection during a nationally targeted 2020 race. Otherwise, the Portland suburbs have shifted dramatically toward Democrats. But Republicans are signaling hope this time around.
“We’re going to try to run up the numbers very big in rural Maine to try to overcome Portland,” former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, who represented the 2nd District for two terms and will be a Trump surrogate in the state during the 2024 cycle, told WGAN on Monday.
The models still have a Trump victory in Maine as an outside shot, although Biden’s 66 percent chance is a little slimmer than the odds of an NFL kicker making a field goal of 50 yards or more. That means it could certainly happen based on what we know now, but it’s a long road to Election Day.
Mainers are deeply polarized on many attributes of the election. Last week, the University of New Hampshire released a poll showing 51 percent of voters think Trump deserves a large fine after his New York conviction, while 52 percent think prison would be inappropriate. A majority supported Biden’s recent executive action on the border, but his job approval fell since April.
Biden’s campaign has responded by focusing heavily on the stakes of the election. This week on the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned federal abortion rights, Gov. Janet Mills was bemused by Trump’s recent statements that he would let states set abortion policies instead of supporting national abortion bans.
“Do you trust him?” Mills asked at a Portland rally, according to Spectrum News Maine. “I sure as hell don’t.”
