In a lot of ways, the redistricting process in Maine is simple. The Maine Constitution requires that the district lines split as few political subdivisions as possible.
The hard part of redistricting is that the process requires consensus. The initial draft is drawn by a bipartisan commission but has to be approved by a supermajority of the state legislature. That limits the opportunity for political gamesmanship.
Maine only has two congressional districts. Currently, the only split county in Maine is Kennebec County, home to the state capitol of Augusta. Currently, the First District is about 50% urban, but the Second District is only around 28% urban. As one would expect, the current population estimates for the districts has the First District with some excess population and the Second District is a little bit short. Assuming that the estimates are correct, that will require moving about 14,000 people from the First District into the Second District. The only question is which precincts to move, and what might control that decision is the requirement to avoid splitting political subdivisions.
On the political side of the equation, the First District is currently approximately D+5 and the Second District is R+4. There are two things to be noted about those numbers. First, they assume a 50-50 split nationally. As Democrats have actually been leading in the popular vote nationally, the First District is a little bit safer than those numbers imply and the Second District is swingier than the number implies. Second, Maine uses ranked-choice voting and the calculation of partisan lean is based on first choice votes. The combined impact of these changes is that Democrats currently have a majority in the First District, but the Republicans only have a plurality in the Second District. If a candidate overperforms (as Trump did in 2020), a Republican can win the Second District, but, otherwise, Republicans are very beatable on second and third preferences as happened in 2018 for the congressional race.
At quick glance, there are only a couple of viable options.
Option 1 (the northern option) would be to move Waterville into the Second District and moving two of Fayette, Mount Vernon, and Wayne into the First District. This option improves the Democratic average in the Second District by around 0.2-0.3%.
Option 2 (the southern option) would move some combination of Chelsea, Farmingdale, Hallowell, Manchester, Pittston, Readfield, and Winthrop from the First to the Second. To move Chelsea, you need to also move Pittston. To move Hallowell, you must also move Farmingdale. And to move Manchester, you must also move Readfield and Winthrop. If you moved all seven, you would need to move Belgrade and Sidney to the First District. Again, however, this move would only improve the Democratic average by around 0.2-0.3%.
In either case, you are only moving around 20,000 people around and the red precincts in the Second District in Kennebec County aren’t that red and the blue districts aren’t that blue. The southern option represent a net swing of around 1,200 votes. The northern option represents a swing of around 1,800 votes. The Republican edge in the Second District on first preference votes is currently around 8,000 votes. In short, we are likely to see a marginal improvement of Democratic chances in the Second District. That will make it slightly easier to keep the Second District, but as Democrats currently have both seats in the House that would not have any impact on control of the House.
(It is possible to more aggressively reconfigure Kennebec County to move more Republican precincts into the First District and more Democratic precincts into the Second District, but even then Republicans would still have a narrow plurality in the Second District.)
In theory, that also improves the Democratic chances of sweeping Maine’s electoral votes. But, the Second District is close enough that you need the right candidates to win. Based on the 2016 and 2020 election, the Second District seems to be responsive to a Trumpish Republican and it takes the right Democrat to win that district. The type of candidate who can win the Democratic nomination for president might not be the best candidate for the Second District of Maine.
For both the House (particularly when it is an open seat) and for President, there is a good chance that the Second District will come down to second preference votes. But ultimately, barring a major change to the historical shape of the First District (southeastern Maine along the coast) and the Second District (everything else), redistricting in Maine for the U.S. House should be relatively calm with very little impact on the national political picture.
