In 2022 we preserved a critical pro-democracy trifecta, defending governing power that has worked to improve millions of lives since 2018 when we first helped to flip the Senate. In 2024, The States Project is investing in state lawmakers committed to protecting personal freedoms, including abortion access, defending democracy, and other policies that will improve the lives of all Mainers.

Since 2018, Maine’s majorities have worked to enact policies to secure a healthy, prosperous, and sustainable future including:

• Codified some of the strongest abortion protections in the country for over 600,000 patients and thousands of healthcare providers
• In the wake of a mass shooting, enacted common sense gun safety policies aimed at preventing future tragedies
• Ensured that more Mainers have access to paid family and medical leave
• Saved lives by cutting healthcare costs — capping the price of insulin, ending surprise billing, and ensuring safe, low-cost prescriptions
• Addressed the housing crisis in the state by allocating more than $100 million to build units over the next seven years that working Mainers can afford
• Secured 15,000 clean energy jobs for Mainers and 12,000 Electric Vehicles on Maine’s roads making progress toward achieving majority clean energy for the state
• Protected nearly 250,000 children from lead in schools and daycares
• Safeguarded online data privacy for over 1.3 million Mainers
• Expanded democracy through automatic voter registration and pre-registration of voters aged 16-17

In 2022, The States Project worked to protect majorities in both chambers.

• To hold the Senate majority we helped to create in 2018 and expand in 2020, we won five crucial seats.
  • If 1,709 voters had changed across these five districts, the radical right would now control this chamber.
• New maps made the Maine House majority vulnerable, so in 2022 The States Project worked in the chamber for the first time. With just one seat lost under the new maps, we helped hold ground in the Maine House.
  • If just 616 voters had changed across the nine closest districts, there would be a rightwing Maine House majority.
• Maine elected its most diverse majorities ever in 2022,. The House majority we helped defend has elected the first Black Speaker of the House to ever serve in Maine: Rachel Talbot Ross.

• Candidates that our efforts supported gained a new seat to expand the State Senate majority that we helped flip in 2018. Maine has its largest majority in more than 30 years, and more importantly, a majority committed to improving the lives of all Mainers.
• Two of our wins came from districts that Donald Trump carried:
  • The Senate President was re-elected by 18 percent, a 29-point swing from his district’s presidential performance and one of the biggest over-performances in the country.
  • Another State Senator, who won by 235 votes in 2018, was elected to his second term by more than 1,500 votes.
• The 2020 Maine electoral results show the importance of sustained, multicycle work in the states. In a year when, on average, Maine Democratic State Senate candidates performed 3 percent worse than the top of the ticket, candidates The States Project supported performed about 3 percent better on average.

All 35 of Maine’s State Senate seats were up for election in 2018. In an election where every tipping point district supported by TSP was a potential flip, three State Senators won critical battleground seats to shift the balance of power and create a new majority and a trifecta.