A contest still won by the Republicans but with a narrower margin than usual would still predict good Democratic results nationally.
[1] Maine's reputation as a bellwether began in 1840, when it elected Edward Kent, the Whig Party candidate, as its governor; two months later, the Whig Party presidential candidate, William Henry Harrison, won the 1840 presidential election.
That November, however, Maine and Vermont were the only states that Republican nominee Alf Landon carried over President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election, giving Landon only eight electoral votes (the three from Vermont and the five from Maine),[6] equalling the smallest total ever (as of 2024[update]) won by a major-party nominee since the beginning of the current U.S. two-party system in 1856: Landon was defeated by Roosevelt in an unprecedented landslide, destroying any credibility of the phrase, and also lost his home state of Kansas by a large margin.
James Farley, a leading Democratic strategist who managed FDR's campaign, quipped "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.
Later, in 1968, favorite son Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine was the vice-presidential candidate on the losing Democratic ticket led by Hubert Humphrey, and flipped the state.