OGUNQUIT, Maine — As Maine goes, so goes the nation? Maybe. But maybe not.
That phrase, from the faded past, once was a sturdy political guideline. For decades, beginning when it joined the Union as part of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, Maine’s state and congressional elections — befitting a place where the rays from the sun hit its shores before landing farther inland — occurred earlier than those in the rest of the country. Often, its election results signaled national trends; Maine’s Republican wave of 1888, for example, foreshadowed the later triumph of GOP presidential nominee Benjamin Harrison.
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