In a sign of the extent to which the GOP is winning everywhere this year, Republican Paul LePage is primed to be the first candidate from his party elected Governor of Maine since 1990. LePage leads with 40% to 28% for independent Eliot Cutler and 24% for Democrat Libby Mitchell.
What's most remarkable about LePage's likely victory is that it comes despite the fact that a majority of Maine voters don't like him. 51% of them have an unfavorable opinion of him to only 42% who see him in a positive light. But because he has a relatively unified conservative base while Democratic leaning voters are splitting almost evenly between Mitchell and Cutler he's in a position to win without coming anywhere close to 50% of the vote.
LePage is winning Republicans, who because of the enthusiasm gap are actually the largest group of voters in Maine this year, by a 71-18 margin. Mitchell is pretty much out of contention at this point because she is barely taking even a majority of Democratic voters, holding a 51-30 advantage over Cutler. Cutler meanwhile has the advantage with independents at 40% to 31% for LePage and with Mitchell registering at only 17%.
Cutler is easily the most popular candidate in the race, with 46% of voters seeing him positively to only 33% with an unfavorable opinion. His problem is that a lot of people who like him aren't planning to vote for him. Among voters with a favorable opinion of Cutler only 56% actually plan to vote for him while 21% are going for LePage and 18% plan to support Mitchell. To put it in comparison 87% of voters who like LePage are also planning to cast their ballots for him, which is why he's beating Cutler by such a wide margin despite being less popular than him.
People who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 are going 42% for Mitchell and 40% for Cutler. As long as that remains the case there's no possible outcome in this race other than a LePage victory. LePage's support remains pretty solid so Mitchell's supporters would have to flock toward Cutler or vice versa for him not to win and that seems unlikely unless one of the candidates drops out of the race and endorses the other between now and Tuesday.
That seems unlikely to happen so it appears Paul LePage will be the next Governor of Maine.
Full results here
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5 comments:
A great example of a Tea Party candidate being incredibly successful where a establishment retread would have had a much harder time.
I feel so sad knowing that Paul will be the next Governor. He'll not be able to accomplish much in view of the fact that most of his ideas are too extreme for the mainstream of politics. We'll have a mess for four years. I voted for Cutler hoping that somehow he could pull it out, that doesn't seem likely at this point. guess we'll have to live with Paul, like it or not.
Uh, I don't see how this is a Tea Party victory. The Democrats are splitting the leftwing vote. Any Republican worth his salt could be winning this race with numbers in the high 30's.
Another dismal failure of the plurality voting system in a multi-candidate race. Wonder what the results would be with ranked, cumulative, or approval voting?
Thanks Eliot for ensuring that Maine will get a crackpot governor for the next four years. I suspect your political career is over, you should have stayed in the party and run as a D and you might have had a chance.
The folly of too big an ego.
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