Welcome back to the deep dive. You know, there's
this specific kind of anxiety that kicks in every
four years in the United States. Oh, yeah. It's
usually what, 7 .0 p .m. on a Tuesday in November.
And you're just refreshing a Web page, staring
at a screen, and you're just desperate for a
sign. You're looking for that crystal ball. It's
the holy grail of political science. Exactly.
We want certainty in a process that is. I mean,
it's inherently chaotic. And because of that,
we tend to obsess over patterns. We look at bellwether
counties in Ohio or we stare at the blue wall
or we, you know, we analyze diner interviews
and swing states. We convince ourselves that
if we just look at this one spot, we can unlock
the code for the whole country. It's just human
nature. Yeah. We hate randomness. We want to
believe there's a signal hidden in all the noise.
Well, today we are going to talk about the granddaddy
of all political signals. It's a phrase you have
almost certainly heard. even if you're not a
political janky. It sounds like this piece of
ancient folklore. As Maine goes, so goes the
nation. It really does have a nice ring to it.
Sounds so authoritative, like Maine is some kind
of mystical oracle tucked away up there that
decides the fate of the presidency. But today
we're going to destroy that myth, or at least
we're going to dissect it. We're digging into
the history, the data, and the Wikipedia entry
for this specific maxim to figure out why it
existed. why it worked for a solid century, and
then, and this is the fun part, how it just spectacularly
crashed and burned. It's a classic story of data
failure, really. It's what happens when you rely
on a metric that works perfectly right up until
the moment it stops working entirely. So let's
start with the why. I mean, if you look at a
map, Maine's an outlier. It's geographically
isolated, small population, and the winters are
not for the faint of heart. So why on earth did
anyone think Maine was the predictor? Well, the
magic, if you want to call it that, wasn't political
at all. It was purely logistical. It wasn't about
who was voting. It was all about when they were
voting. The calendar. The calendar. Yeah. Exactly.
So you have to go back to 1820. That's when Maine
splits off from Massachusetts, becomes its own
state. And right from the jump, they set their
election schedule differently. They held their
big elections governor, Congress, in September.
September. So two months before the rest of the
country. Why the gap? It really comes down to
what the source material calls the frigid November
weather. I mean, you have to picture Maine in
1820. No paved roads, no snow plows. No cars.
No cars, right. Getting to the town square to
vote in late November wasn't just a civic duty.
It was a survival situation. Okay, that makes
sense. A big snowstorm hits and your turnout
just plummets. It drops to zero. And on top of
that, Maine was a big agricultural state and
the harvest cycle ended earlier up there. So
it just made practical sense. Get it all done
in September while the roads were still passable.
So they voted for governor in Congress in September,
but they still voted for president in November
like everyone else. Yes. The presidential election
date was set federally. They couldn't change
that. But by the time November rolled around,
Maine had already elected its entire state government.
Which means the rest of the country got a massive
spoiler alert. A sneak preview. Think about it.
In the mid -1800s, you didn't have Gallup polling
or, you know, Nate Silver running simulations.
You had no hard data except for Maine. It was
the only tangible data point available. Precisely.
If a party did well in Maine in September, it
was the only real -world evidence of how voters
were feeling about the national platform. So
this whole maxim wasn't just some superstition.
It was based on a pretty solid track record,
wasn't it? Oh, it was incredibly accurate for
a very long time. The source material points
out that between 1820 and 1932, that's a 112
-year span, Maine's September results correctly
predicted the party that would win the presidency
in 21 out of 28 elections. 21 out of 28. That's
a 75 % success rate. If a stock picker had that
record today, they'd be a billionaire. It's impressive.
And that's what built the legend. It really started
to clutch on around 1840. The Whig Party candidate,
a guy named Edward Kent, he wins the governorship
in September. Two months later, The Whig presidential
candidate, William Henry Harrison, wins the White
House. Tippecanoe and Tyler, too. That's the
one. Yeah. So people started connecting the dots.
Then it happens again in 1888. Maine votes solidly
Republican in September. Later that year, Benjamin
Harrison, a Republican, wins the presidency.
Now, wait a second. My history is a little rusty,
but Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote nationwide
that year, didn't he? He did. Yeah, it was a
messy election against Grover Cleveland. But
Harrison won the Electoral College. So even in
a weird split verdict election, Maine still technically
called the winner. That's when the phrase really
got locked into the American lexicon. OK, but
let's dig into the data here because this is
where it gets tricky. You said Maine was pretty
heavily Republican for most of that era, right?
It wasn't really a swing state. That is the crucial
context. After the Civil War, it becomes a stronghold
for the new Republican Party. It was not, you
know, Pennsylvania or Florida today. It was deep
red, to use our terms. So here's my question.
If Maine is always voting Republican, how does
that predict anything? I mean, if a Republican
wins Maine and a Democrat wins the presidency,
the rule is broken. But if a Republican wins
Maine and the nation, isn't that just Maine doing
what Maine always does? And you've just hit on
the most sophisticated part of this whole thing.
It's the part that pundits today often forget.
It wasn't about the identity of the winner in
Maine. It was about the margin of victory. OK,
unpack that for me. How did the margin tell the
story? Think of Maine. Not as a crystal ball,
but more like a barometer for enthusiasm. Everyone
knew the Republicans would probably win the governor's
race. The real question was, by how much? So
they were looking at the spread, like in sports
betting. Exactly like sports betting. The baseline
was Republican win. So if the GOP won Maine by
a massive landslide in September, say 20 points
or more, that was a signal that the party base
was energized and that momentum would probably
carry over to the real swing states in November.
But if they barely scraped by. That was the danger
zone. If the Republicans won but the margin was
narrow, say less than 5%, that was seen as a
disaster. It meant the Democrats were overperforming.
And if Democrats were overperforming in a stronghold
like Maine, they were probably going to crush
it in the states that actually mattered. Wow.
Yes. So a close run Republican victory in September
was basically a warning siren for November. It
predicted a Democratic national victory. That
is fascinating. So a Republican win in Maine
could actually predict a Democrat in the White
House. It did. And the parties took it so seriously.
The source notes they went to considerable lengths
to win these elections. They would pour money
and resources into Maine in August. For a state
with just a handful of electoral votes, it was
all psychological warfare. 100 percent. It was
about shaping the narrative. If you could dominate
the headlines in September with a GOP smashes
main story. You could demoralize the opposition
for two months. It works until it doesn't. And
this brings us to the villain of our story. The
year 1936. The year the bellwether broke. I love
this part. It feels like a movie script. You've
got the setup, the hubris, and then the fall.
So set the scene. Okay. It's 1936. The Great
Depression is in full swing. Yeah. FDR is in
the White House with the New Deal. And the Republicans
are desperate to get back in power. They nominate.
Alf Landon, the governor of Kansas. And the Republicans
are feeling surprisingly good, right? They are.
And a huge reason for that confidence comes from
Maine. In September 1936, the Maine Republicans
have a field day. They elect a Republican governor,
Louis Barrows. They elect an all -Republican
congressional delegation. A clean sweep. A total
clean sweep. And the party leadership went wild.
They thought the tide had turned. They looked
at their trusty barometer and saw clear skies
ahead. They were convinced this predicted a national
rejection of FDR. Oh, absolutely. The vice presidential
candidate, Frank Knox, actually said, as Maine
goes, so goes the nation, is still the gospel
truth. They were trumpeting this everywhere.
So September looks great for them, then November
arrives. And the floor just drops out. How bad
was it? It wasn't just a loss, it was an annihilation.
FDR didn't just win. He won one of the greatest
electoral landslides in American history up to
that point. And what happened to Alf Landon,
the guy whose party won the bellwether? Poor
Alf Landon. He carried exactly two states. Let
me guess. Maine was one of them. Maine and Vermont.
That's it. Just those two states huddled together
in the corner. Landon got a total of eight electoral
votes. FDR got 523. 523 to eight. That's astounding.
It's still the smallest electoral vote total
for a major party nominee since the two -party
system really began in 1856. So the bellwether
didn't just fail. It was basically the only place
in the country that was wrong. It was perfectly
out of sync with America. It was an island. And
the maxim, as Maine goes, so goes the nation,
became an instant joke. And this gives us one
of the absolute best clapbacks in political history
from James Farley, FDR's campaign manager. He
didn't miss a beat. When he saw that map, just
a sea of blue with two little red dots, Farley
announced to the press, as Maine goes. So goes
Vermont. As Maine goes, so goes Vermont. That
is just savage. It was the perfect dismissal.
He's saying, sure, you two are statistically
correlated. You're just totally irrelevant to
the rest of us. And that pretty much killed the
superstition on the spot, didn't it? It shattered
the credibility. If you look at the data after
1936, the correlation just evaporates. Between
1940 and 1956, Maine's September winner only
matched the November presidential winner in one
of those five elections. One out of five. You'd
be better off flipping a coin. Much better. The
magic was gone. And finally, in 1959, Maine changed
its laws. Since 1960, they voted in November
with everyone else. The preview era was officially
over. I want to circle back to that Farley quote
for a second. As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.
The source material calls them the Twin States.
Was Farley just making a joke or is there real
data behind that? No, he was spot on. Mathematically,
the political correlation between Maine and Vermont
is incredibly strong. Almost unnerving. How strong
are we talking? Since the Republican Party was
born in 1854, they've voted for different presidential
candidates in the same election only twice. Wait,
only twice in over 150 years? Only twice. Through
the Civil War, the Gilded Age, the Depression,
the Cold War. They have walked in lockstep. OK,
I have to know, what were the two times they
broke up? The first was 1912. That was the Bull
Moose election. You had Teddy Roosevelt running
as a third -party candidate against the incumbent
Republican, Taft. Right, the great Republican
split. Exactly. Teddy was very popular in Maine,
and he split the vote so much that the Democrat,
Woodrow Wilson, snuck through and won the state.
But Vermont stayed loyal to the official Republican
candidate, Taft. So it took a former president
blowing up his own party to separate them. What
was the second time? 1968. Richard Nixon for
the Republicans. Vermont voted for Nixon, but
Maine voted for the Democrat Hubert Humphrey.
Why the split that time? Humphrey had an ace
up his sleeve. His running mate for vice president
was Senator Edmund Muskie. Ah, the favorite son.
Exactly. Muskie was a beloved figure in Maine
politics. His presence on the ticket was just
enough to flip Maine to the Democrats. while
Vermont stayed Republican. It's pretty telling
that it took these extraordinary circumstances
to drive a wedge between them. Otherwise, they're
politically identical. It shows deep cultural
similarities, although it is worth noting they
aren't Republican strongholds anymore. Right.
Today, the Northeast is pretty reliably blue.
And they shifted together. The source notes that
starting around 1992, both Maine and Vermont
became reliably Democratic in presidential years.
So they're still twins. They just switch sides
together. I think there's a bigger lesson here.
We started this talking about how much we crave
patterns. The Republicans in 1936 weren't being
stupid. They had 100 years of data on their side.
They were following the trend line. They were
following a trend line that had expired. And
that's the danger of political data. It's not
physics. Gravity works the same way in 1820 as
it does in 1936. But in politics, the underlying
variables, demographics, party platforms are
constantly shifting. The as Maine goes maxim
worked when the political divide in Maine sort
of mirrored the national divide. Correct. But
the New Deal realigned American politics. It
brought in coalitions of urban workers and minorities
that just didn't really exist in the same way
in Maine. So Maine stood still and the country
moved on. The bellwether didn't break. The flock
just flew to a different pasture. And the Republicans
missed it because they were looking at the one
data point that confirmed what they wanted to
believe. They mistook a local weather report
for a national climate forecast. That's a perfect
way to put it. It really makes you wonder what
our main is today. We don't use that phrase,
but we have others. We talk about the Blue Wall
or bellwether counties. We're always looking
for that shortcut. We absolutely are. The source
material mentions things like the Missouri bellwether.
We're always desperate for a simple rule that
tells us the whole story so we don't have to
deal with the messy complexity of 50 different
states. But the lesson of 1936 is that those
shortcuts work right up until the moment they
spectacularly fail. And usually that failure
happens during a realigning election when the
rules of the game are changing under our feet.
That's when the old metrics are most dangerous.
If you're looking at a map from 20 years ago
to predict tomorrow, you're going to end up like
Al Flandin. Winning two states and becoming a
trivia question. Precisely. So the next time
you hear a pundit say, this county has predicted
the winner for the last 50 years, maybe, take
it with a grain of salt. Or a grain of granite,
in Maine's case. Fair enough. Well, that brings
us to the end of our deep dive. A story of frozen
roads, margin analysis, and the danger of assuming
the future will always look like the past. A
good reminder to always question your assumptions.
Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the
next deep dive. Goodbye, everyone.