Willkie won Maine by a narrow margin of 2.33%. This was a swing of 11.66% to Roosevelt during an election where he lost eight states and almost 700 counties that had supported him four years earlier, mostly because of MidwesternGerman-American opposition to increasing "tension" with Nazi Germany.[1] However, the Atlanticist tendencies of Yankee and French-Canadian Maine and support for aid to the United Kingdom and France in World War II led to substantial gains for Roosevelt in the state.[2] Maine was one of six states that swung more Democratic compared to 1936, alongside Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and North Carolina.
This was the first time that Kennebec County (home of Augusta, the state capital) had ever voted for a Democratic presidential candidate.[3]
^Dunn, Susan; 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler–the Election Amid the Storm, p. 107 ISBN0300190867
^Phillips, Kevin; The Emerging Republican Majority; p. 93 ISBN1400852293
^Menendez, Albert J.; The Geography of Presidential Elections in the United States, 1868-2004, p. 68 ISBN0786422173