There were no surprises in the northeast corner of York County on March 5.
A total of 5,497 people in Saco, Biddeford and Old Orchard Beach cast votes in the state’s presidential primary. Maine was one of 14 states that held a Democratic and Repulican contest on Super Tuesday, as did one U.S. territory, American Samoa.
Alaska held its Republican caucus and we also learned the results of the Democratic Iowa caucus.
President Joe Biden won the Democratic primary in each municipality, notching 777 votes in Biddeford, 950 in Saco, and 555 in Old Orchard Beach.
In Saco, 77 voters cast ballots for Democrat Dean Phillips, the Minnesota House representative, and 95 people left their ballot blank. In Biddeford, 90 voted for Phillips, and 148 people left their ballots blank. In Old Orchard Beach, 40 voted for Phillips and 53 entered blanks.
Phillips announced March 6 that he is exiting the race and endorsing Biden.
On the Republican side, 377 Saco voters cast a ballot for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – who also dropped out of the race on March 6 – and 772 voted for former President Donald Trump. A total of 22 people in Saco voted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and two people voted for entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Both DeSantis and Ramaswamy ended their campaigns in January. A reported 20 people left their ballots blank.
Numbers looked similar for Republican voters in Biddeford; 218 voted for Haley, and 602 voted for Trump. DeSantis and Ramaswamy earned three votes each, and 13 people left their ballots blank.
In Old Orchard Beach, Haley had 210 votes to Trump’s 453 votes. Seven voters cast a ballot for DeSantis and none voted for Ramaswamy.
Longshot GOP candidate Ryan Binkley, who dropped out in February, also appeared on the ballot, and earned three votes in Biddeford and four votes in Saco, and two votes in OOB.
The election was governed by Maine’s new semi-open primary system, meaning that voters who are unenrolled can vote in either party’s primary. Voters already enrolled in a party can only vote in that party’s primary.
Statewide, Biden won the Democratic primary with 93% of votes cast. With over 95% of votes cast in the Republican primary, Donald Trump had 72% of votes and Haley had 25%.
At one point, it was not certain that Trump would appear on the ballot. In December, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that Trump was ineligible for the ballot due to his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Bellows had suspended the ruling pending appeal, and the day before Maine’s primary, on March 4, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that individual states can’t prevent Trump from running for office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which bars insurrectionists from holding office.
Bellows removed her objection following the Supreme Court’s decision.
Despite stumping in Portland right before the primary and notching an endorsement from Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Haley was unable to make real inroads with Mainers, or with the vast majority of Republican voters who made it to the polls on March 5.
Haley dropped out of the race March 6 after winning only one Super Tuesday state, Vermont. Haley’s only other primary victory was in Washington D.C., where she earned 62% of votes.
Biden doesn’t face a credible challenger at the ballot box, but a nontrivial number of Democratic voters have cast “uncommitted” ballots to protest his largely unqualified support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which some experts have called genocide.
More than 100,000 Democratic voters cast uncommitted ballots in Michigan’s presidential primary and nearly 46,000 Democratic voters in Minnesota. In Massachusetts, roughly 9% of voters cast “no preference” votes and roughly 12% did so in North Carolina.
The push to get voters to cast an uncommitted ballot has come from the Arab and Muslim community and progressive groups.
In Maine, voters are not able to officially cast an “uncommitted” ballot; only declared write-in candidates will be counted, according to state law.
Stephen Lyons was the only declared write-in candidate that appeared on the ballot. He garnered zero votes in Saco, OOB, and Biddeford.
Maine Voice for Palestinian Rights, a group that advocates for Palestinian freedom and liberation, urged Mainers to write in “ceasefire” on their ballots to express anger at Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
Recent polling from Data For Progress shows that some two-thirds of American voters support a ceasefire.
“Despite relying on our votes in the 2020 presidential race — and in the coming election this fall — President Biden isn’t listening to the 80% of Democratic voters who want a ceasefire,” wrote the group on a petition circulated prior to the primary asking people to pledge that they would write in “ceasefire.”
In Saco, City Clerk Michele Hughes said that “none of the election clerk’s mentioned seeing ‘ceasefire’ written on the ballots as they were transferring them from the machine to the tamper proof boxes.”
OOB’s Town Clerk Kim McLaughlin said that none of the clerks recorded someone writing in “ceasefire,” but that they only tally declared write-in candidates.
Biddeford’s City Clerk Robin Patterson did not respond to a question about voters writing in “ceasefire” before press time.
The group Maine Voice for Palestinian rights recently held a protest at a General Dynamics factory in Saco to protest the plant’s production of guided missile directors, which they say are likely used in Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza.
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