Now that we’ve had a few days to let the election results in the Maine Legislature be fully reported - pending any possible recounts, which won’t affect the balance of power in either chamber - it’s worth taking a deep dive into the numbers overall, and what it may mean for the future. For the initial version of this article, I’m relying on the preliminary numbers as reported by the Portland Press Herald, where my column appears in print every Sunday. I’m excluding the completely noncompetitive races where there was literally only one name on the ballot; unfortunately, there were quite a few of those in the House.
To be specific, there were twelve Republican-held seats in the House without anyone else on the ballot, and fourteen Democratic-held seats. That reflects a failure on the part of party leadership: voters in every district deserve a choice. Even if the district doesn’t ultimately end up being competitive in the general election, it’s worth at least finding a placeholder candidate. These completely non-competitive seats put House Republicans down two before Election Day even began.
There were two more districts where there were unenrolled and Democratic candidates, but no Republican; the Democrat won both of these and they are included in the overall total. There were a further six districts where there was a Republican and at least one unenrolled candidate, but no Democrat; Republicans won four of these seats while the unenrolled candidates won two of them.
Overall, the Democrats gained seats in the Maine House, giving them an 82-67 fifteen-seat edge, which doesn’t make the chamber look particularly competitive. That means, though, that to regain the majority in 2024, Republicans will need to flip nine seats - hardly an impossible task. Similarly, in the Maine Senate, the Democrats’ 22-13 advantage seemingly appears insurmountable, but that just means Republicans will have to flip five seats to regain the majority.
That fifteen-seat Democratic majority in the Maine House looks even less impressive when one tallies up the statewide popular vote in for House candidates. Democrats won almost 277,000 votes to Republicans’ 258,000 votes, with around 18,000 votes going to unenrolled and third-party candidates.
That means that, statewide, the race for control of the Maine House was much closer than the gubernatorial race in districts with more than one candidate. Republican legislators - in both chambers - outperformed Paul LePage by a slim margin of about three percentage points on average, and Democrats very wisely invested invested their resources, choosing the right districts with the right candidates to expand their majority.
For instance, in the ten most competitive districts where the margin of victory was less than 150 votes - regardless of party - Democrats won six of the ten. In those districts alone, a clean Republican sweep would not have been enough to win the majority: Instead, the Maine House would now be 76-72-2, with the two unenrolled legislators functionally adding to the Democratic majority. Overall, though, Republican candidates would have only needed another 609 votes to flip those six seats, making their path to a majority that much closer.
If we expand the Maine House playing field to the ten most competitive seats for either party - that is, twenty seats in total, the median seats in the House - that path becomes quite a bit easier. The ten closest seats that Republicans lost this year (one was won by an unenrolled candidate, not a Democrat) were won by a little more than 1,300 votes total, while the ten closest seats that Republicans won this year were won by a little more than 1,700 votes total. To reach the majority after flipping the six most competitive seats they lost, Republicans need to sweep all of those seats, keep all of their own competitive districts, and find a few new districts that they can push into play.
That may seem like an impossibility, but it’s not: There are six more seats that Democrats only won by 500 votes or less that could become competitive. Democrats, though, have another eight seats in that category that they, too, could target, if they want to expand their majority rather than simply play defense.
Beyond those sub-500 vote districts, both parties have other seats that they could target, what we’ll call sleeper districts. Ten years ago, in 2012, Republicans managed to flip two of these seats in Augusta, with Matt Pouliot and Corey Wilson winning tough seats in what was otherwise a solid wave election for Maine Democrats. That’s a perfect example of expanding the playing field, and it’s not something that either party in Maine has put much focus on as of late, but if Republicans want to regain the majority in the House, it’s something they’ll have to consider.
Reaching the majority in the Maine Senate may be a little easier for Republicans. There are five seats that Democrats won by less than 1,000 votes in the Senate - coincidentally the exact margin that Republicans need to win a bare majority. Since Democrats did so well this year, they only have one sub-1,000 seat in the Maine Senate that they could similarly target. However, since Democrats are well aware of what the most hotly contested seats in the Maine Senate will be, Republicans would be wise to look beyond those five seats for potential pickup opportunities.
Just because the Democrats managed to build a healthy majority in a tough year doesn’t mean they can simply rest on their laurels in 2024. They will have to fight hard to expand their majority much farther, or even to defend it, in two years - especially if the Maine GOP manages to learn a few lessons this year and change how they do things. If not, they’ll doom themselves to a repeat failure for the fourth cycle in a row.
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