The election results are in, and the story was the same everywhere in the country: Democrats won a resounding victory nearly everywhere, including in Maine.
In the marquis matchup, incumbent Senator Susan Collins was defeated by former state senator Troy Jackson. Collins performed admirably in the campaign, and massively over-performed all of the other Senate candidates across the country, but the size of the “Blue Tsunami” was strong enough to sweep Jackson into office.
Hannah Pingree, the Democratic candidate for governor, defeated Republican nominee Bobby Charles, as well as unenrolled candidate Rick Bennett. The size of her victory was an astounding 17.6 percentage points, and she will be joined in Augusta by a strengthened Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate.
The one bright spot for Maine Republicans — and indeed Republicans nationwide — was the victory of Paul LePage in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. While narrow, and while it is heading to a more-or-less unnecessary ranked-choice voting runoff, his victory stands as the only campaign that successfully turned a blue seat red in this election cycle.
We break down all the results, but more importantly we talk about where the conservative movement, and indeed the state of Maine, goes from here. Is this evidence that “Maine is Lost,” and should people abandon ship? Is this a temporary setback in an otherwise positive trend for the Right? Somewhere in between? And what will we expect to see out of the new Pingree administration when the new government is sworn in?
All this and more on this after-election edition of the Pine Tree Pulse.