AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s independent voters are now eligible to vote in Tuesday’s presidential primaries, but few have requested absentee ballots so far in a sign of apathy ahead of races that look like foregone conclusions.
Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden are deeply unpopular nationally but remain heavily favored to win the Republican and Democratic nominating races over nominal opposition, although former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is still running an active campaign against Trump and will hold a rally in Portland on Sunday night.
These will be Maine’s first primaries held under a 2022 law that makes them “semi-open” to non-party voters. Fewer than 5,000 — or less than 2 percent of the unenrolled voters in Maine — had requested an absentee ballot as of Thursday afternoon, according to data from Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ office.
Party voters are not deeply interested, either. Just fewer than 19,000 Democrats and more than 10,000 Republicans pulled absentee ballots as of Friday. That is compared with the 36,000 Democrats and 13,000 Republicans who did so ahead of the 2020 presidential primaries in which Biden faced a large field and Trump was unopposed as an incumbent.
“It seems to me indicative of a complete, depressing state of malaise for the Maine electorate and everybody else,” Lance Dutson, a Republican strategist who has worked for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and organized against Trump during the 2016 election, said of the figures.
The figures portend low turnout for Tuesday’s election, which features few other notable races across the state. Trump has won each of the first four nominating contests, while Biden is facing no real threat in his primary as well. That is despite low favorability ratings for both men.
Trump faces four pending criminal cases alleging he sought to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Biden in the run-up to the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021, mishandled classified documents, tried to reverse his 2020 loss in Georgia and made hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Biden’s age of 81 has shown in polls to be a major concern among voters.
Biden easily won Democratic-leaning Maine in 2020, although Trump won the more conservative 2nd Congressional District for the second straight time. There are early warning signs for Biden here, including a poll released last week that showed Trump leading him by 6 percentage points statewide.
Maine’s Tuesday presidential primaries will also be the first ever to use ranked-choice voting, although the state Republican Party will ignore the method and only use first-round totals to award national convention delegates.