In 2022, The States Project successfully protected both the Senate and House majorities in the Maine state legislature. 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.

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

• Creating a climate action plan
• Implementing a student loan bill of rights
• Enacting equal pay transparency
• Protecting children from lead in schools and daycares
• Securing salary history fairness for job seekers
• Supporting working families with paid sick leave
• Safeguarding online data privacy
• Expanding our democracy through automatic voter registration and pre-registration of voters aged 16-17
• Saving lives by cutting healthcare costs by capping the price of insulin, ending surprise billing, and ensuring safe, low-cost prescriptions

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, we helped hold ground in the Maine House.
  • If just 616 voters had changed across the nine closest districts, there would be a new Maine House majority.
• Maine elected its most diverse majorities ever in 2022, with more representation of immigrant and Black state lawmakers than in years past. The House majority we helped defend has elected the first Black Speaker of the House to ever serve in Maine: Rachel Talbot Ross.

2021 SPECIAL ELECTION

Fueled by Giving Circles and Give Smart, The States Project drove the most contributions to support a critical 2021 special election. We helped hold a seat that Trump won by 2 percent in 2016.

• 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 when every candidate supported by TSP was a challenger running to flip a seat, three State Senators won critical battleground seats to shift the balance of power and create a new majority and a trifecta.