Maine

Maine entered the Union in March 1820 as part of the Missouri Compromise. No state outside the original 13 colonies has started with more electoral votes – it had nine in the 1820 election. By the mid-19th century, Maine began losing electoral votes, and has had four since the 1964 election. Primarily Republican from the Civil War (going “blue” only in 1912, 1964, and 1968) through the 1980s, Maine has voted Democratic in the last eight elections, although the 2016 race was quite close by recent historical standards, Hillary Clinton prevailed by 3% over Donald Trump. Joe Biden's 2020 margin of victory was 9%.

Maine has been a tale of two states in the last two elections, with the Democratic candidate winning the 1st congressional district and Trump winning the more rural 2nd district. This is significant in that Maine is one of only two states -along with Nebraska- that do not use a winner-take-all electoral vote allocation. Here, the winner of the statewide popular vote gets two electoral votes, while one is assigned to the winner of each district. As a result, Trump won one of the state's four electoral votes both times he was on the ballot.