An Early Look At The Primary Maps

I did some quick charting of the candidate’s performance in the counties of Maine.

For the Republican field, the various colors of red signify counties carried by LePage.  Light red is a county he won by less than ten percent, mid colored red counties are ones he won by more than ten percent but less than twenty percent, and dark colored counties are ones he won by huge margins of twenty percent or more.  The one yellow county is Les Otten, and the one blue county is Bill Beardsley.

It should be noted that LePage came in second in that Beardsley country, and that it is likely this was nothing more than a conservative split between the two, and taken together they represent a massive groundswell of conservative support (which will now belong to LePage alone).

For the Democratic map, Libby Mitchell is in green.  The same scale applies to her as it did to LePage in that color scheme.  The blue county is Steve Rowe’s and the yellowish county belongs to Pat McGowan.

Obviously through looking at these maps we can see that the strength of Paul LePage’s victory as much higher than Mitchell’s.  His supporters were more enthusiastic, and gave him much higher margins than did hers.  He performed in areas of the state you wouldn’t necessarily have guessed he would have.

Both Mitchell and LePage showed dominance in Kennebec county (not at all surprising).  The weakest areas of support for both candidates seemed to be Aroostook, Oxford and Franklin.

This race looks like it is going to turn into a classic.  Libby Mitchell did not perform particularly well in southern Maine, losing to Rowe in Cumberland.  She also did poorly in many of the conservative areas of the state, while LePage actually did quite well in the more moderate/leftist counties.

The race is on.