💰 Campaigns at all levels surge past spending records.
â—‰ The campaign between Mills and LePage has gone over $26 million in spending by outside groups and the candidates as of Tuesday morning, already going past the 2014 record set in the race between LePage and Democrat Mike Michaud.
â—‰ Rep. Jared Golden of Maine's 2nd District and former Rep. Bruce Poliquin have also drawn more outside spending than they did in 2018. The $17.3 million dedicated to the campaign so far is the fifth-highest total of any House race in the country, per tallies from campaign finance watcher Rob Pyers.
â—‰ Things are also getting wild in the Legislature. In 2020, outside groups spent just $3 million on behalf of Democratic and Republican candidates. This year, Democratic groups alone have already spent $3.3 million to hold the Senate to $837,000 for Republicans. In the House, the Democratic advantage is big but at least not exponential at $1.2 million to $714,000.
â—‰ When you add campaign spending to outside spending, the fraught race between Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, and Rep. Sue Bernard, R-Caribou, has already topped $1 million. In the House, 13 races have already exceeded the 2020 high in outside spending.
📮 Democrats are carrying a bigger early voting advantage than in 2018.
â—‰ A new round of data on absentee ballot requests was dropped on Monday by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows' office, with the 211,000 requests far exceeding Maine's total in the 2018 election. It is no shock, given the large transition to absentee voting seen in the pandemic-marked 2020 election.
â—‰ Democrats have made 51 percent of requests so far to Republicans' 23 percent. That margin was 44 percent to 28 percent to this point in the 2018 election, but it is worth noting that Republicans swamped Democrats with in-person turnout two years ago. |
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