Washington County, Maine

[soniquemd21921]

The easternmost county in the United States is a mostly rural county with a fairly small Catholic population. As expected, it was solidly Republican for most of the 20th century, with the exception of the Roosevelt era.

After giving Hoover 73% of the vote in 1928, Hoover only narrowly won it in 1932 (51 percent). But when every other rural Maine county swung to Landon in 1936 (with Waldo County showing an 11-point swing and some Aroostook County towns showing even larger swings), it went in the opposite direction: FDR got 55% of the vote, making it the only rural Protestant county in New England that FDR ever carried. In 1940, he improved slightly (56 percent).

Then, in 1944, it began to swing hard back to the GOP: FDR barely held onto it in his last election (51 percent), then in 1948 it gave Dewey 59 percent of the vote (a 10-point swing). Eisenhower then got 66% in 1952 and a whopping 76% in 1956, and in 1960 it was Nixon's fifth-best county in Maine (66 percent).

Why did this otherwise Republican county show a strong Democratic trend during the Roosevelt era when its neighboring counties were voting strongly Republican as they always did, and then return to its usual Republican voting pattern afterwards?

[historybuff]

The fact that Franklin Roosevelt had a summer home on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada might have something to do with it.  The island borders Washington County.

[The Free North]

I remember when Ron Paul was trying to win Maine, it came down to the caucus in this county, which had pushed the voting back a week due to snow.

Extremely small population, probably one of the more remote places on the continental US