One question I have long wanted to ask is why
Penobscot County, Maine is as Republican as it is, today and even historically.
It is the third-most-populous county in Maine (seventh most populous of 41 in Upper New England), and has a substantial student body at the University of Maine in Orono. Yet, apart from the anti-Goldwater 1964 election and the following “favorite son” 1968 election, no Democrat has ever managed 52 percent of the county’s vote. Even Barack Obama’s
circa 51 percent seems strangely low for an urban college-town county especially one in the Northeast, and was his second-worst showing in Maine after thinly populated Piscataquis County.
Looking more closely at the municipality map does not clarify things perfectly.
If we examine
the county (boundary) map and compare, we do see that there are a few Democratic municipalities in the south, but in fact fewer than in less populous, non-college-town Aroostook or Franklin Counties. We do see many extremely Republican — typical white rural — municipalities in the north of Penobscot, and the map does suggest that one possible reason Penobscot is as Republican as it is is that the county is much more rural than its population figure would imply. Is this correct?
