Maine's electoral votes in U.S. presidential elections 1820-2020

The U.S. presidential election has been held in Maine on 51 occasions, with the Pine Tree State designating the majority of its electoral votes to the overall winner in 34 of these, giving a success rate of 67 percent. Residents of Maine have been able to take part in all U.S. presidential elections since 1789, although their votes were included in Massachusetts' total prior to Maine's admission to the union in 1820. Throughout most of its history, Maine was a staunchly Republican state, voting red in all but one elections between 1856 and 1960 (Maine and Vermont were the only states never to vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt), although it has (mostly) voted Democrat since 1992.

Maine's population

No U.S. president has ever been born in Maine, or resided there before taking office. The only major party candidate to have lived in Maine was James G. Blaine, who had represented Maine in both Houses of Congress before opposing Grover Cleveland in the 1884 election. Because of changing trends in the population and its density of the U.S., Maine is one of the few states whose allocation of electoral votes has decreased throughout most of its history. After admission to the union, Maine began with nine electoral votes (which was unusually high for a newly admitted state), and this number grew to ten in the 1930s; however, this number has gradually decreased over the past two centuries, and has stood at just four electoral votes since the 1960s.

Maine's split

Since 1972, Maine has split its four electoral votes between its two congressional districts; the winner of Maine's overall popular vote receives two votes, while the most popular candidate in each congressional district wins one electoral vote per district. While this system has been in place for almost fifty years, the 2016 election was the first time where the two districts voted for different candidates (the vote was also split in the 1828 election, however a different system was used and Maine was divided into more than two districts). The population of Maine's two congressional districts is fairly similar, although the first is much smaller in size and more urbanized than the second, which covers almost eighty percent of Maine's total land area and is one of the most rural districts in the country. Nebraska is the only other state to split its electoral votes in presidential elections.