Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, has begun airing ads in Maine in an effort to swipe one of the state’s four electoral votes. 

The relatively modest ad buy is reportedly worth $300,000. According to disclosure documents at WCSH Channel 6 in Portland, Restore’s purchase is $107,562. The buy at WCSH 6 is noteworthy because it’s a two-pronged attack; Channel 6 covers portions of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District and New Hampshire where Romney and President Obama are engaged in a tight race. 

The move, designed to capture one of Maine’s four electoral votes, underscores a race that could be decided by the narrowest of margins. 

President Obama decidedly won Maine’s four electoral votes in 2008. However, a recent Republican poll reported that Romney was within striking distance in the 2nd District. 

Romney’s level of support in the 2nd District is significant because Maine is one of two states that allow a presidential candidate to pick up one electoral vote even if he or she loses the state’s popular vote. Romney will get one electoral vote if he wins the 2nd District.

A split vote has never happened in Maine.Nebraska, the other state that splits its electoral votes, has done it only once, when Obama picked up an electoral vote there in 2008 despite losing the statewide popular vote. 

"This is Obama’s economy," the narrator says. 

Maine Democrats remain confident that Obama will carry Maine just as he did in 2008. They also note that neither Romney nor his surrogates have campaigned here. 

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