Former President Donald Trump won the one electoral vote from Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in Tuesday’s election, clinching a split of the state for the third consecutive election.
The Republican had 56 percent of votes to 42.3 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris when the Bangor Daily News and its national partner, Decision Desk HQ, called the district for Trump at 11:43 p.m. Tuesday. Three third-party candidates split 1.8 percent of votes.
Harris, a Democrat, easily won the rest of Maine behind strong margins in southern and suburban areas that have slipped away from Republicans during the Trump era. She won three out of the state’s four electors because of rules used only in Maine and Nebraska that award two to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each congressional district.
Voters in the 2nd District were largely undeterred by a Trump campaign that gave a darker message toward the end of the campaign. The former president is promising to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists, impose sweeping tariffs on all imported goods and run the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
At Bangor’s Cross Insurance Center, 57-year-old machinist Jay Doucette cast his ballot for Trump and other Republicans, blaming Democrats and the media for dividing the country in the last 12 years in a way that will lead to more violence and hatred.
“We have two sides that aren’t meeting halfway,” he said. “I think we’re headed toward a civil war, as much as I hate to admit it.”
Trump’s rise in national politics hastened the “two Maines” political divide between the northern and southern halves of the state. Maine’s two congressional districts voted similarly in presidential elections as recently as the 1990s, but they were 30 percentage points apart when Trump split the state with President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
The former president was the first to split Maine’s electoral votes in 2016, when he stormed to the White House over Democrat Hillary Clinton. He blended a stark break with Republican orthodoxy against trade agreements that are unpopular in Maine’s manufacturing centers with hardline stances on immigration that defined this year’s campaign.
Trump focused heavily on Maine in past years, visiting the state five times during his first run and coming twice more in 2020 while targeting executive actions at lobstermen. He did not come at all this year, instead targeting three “tele-rallies” at the state and 2nd District. That included one call where he repeatedly referred to Gov. Janet Mills with male pronouns.
The former president entered the campaign in a precarious position after being convicted in New York of falsifying business records to conceal an affair that he denied. Yet he was a heavy favorite to win over the summer as concerns about Biden’s age of 81 metastasized among powerful Democrats after a poor debate performance against Trump.
It led to Biden ceding his campaign to Harris, who quickly scaled up to open more than a dozen offices across the 2nd District. Trump’s campaign did not send surrogates to match the Democratic operation. Former President Bill Clinton, who visited Portland last week for Harris, was the biggest name to come to Maine this year.
National Republicans were still represented here through programs coordinated by the state party and the campaign of the Trump-endorsed Rep. Austin Theriault of Fort Kent. He was in a tight race as of Tuesday night with U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents who refused to say whether he was voting for Harris this year.
