Summary of Proprietary Findings From the

Critical Insights on Maine Survey for

ONeil Policy Consulting, Inc.
May 2017
Critical Insights
172 Commercial Street Portland, Maine 04101 Tel (207) 772-4011 CriticalInsights.com
Introduction
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Background & Methodology
Each Spring and Fall, Critical Insights, a division of the Digital Research Group, conducts the Critical Insights on
MaineTM tracking survey, a comprehensive, statewide public opinion survey of registered voters that covers a
variety of topics of interest to businesses, government, and the general public.
Critical Insights on MaineTM has been documenting the attitudes, perceptions, and preferences of Maines
residents for more than 20 years, making it the longest-running consistently-administered tracking survey in the
Northeast.
In addition to general interest items (the results of which are released to the media as a public service), the
survey also includes a number of proprietary items for sponsoring entities, with results of those items
released only to those sponsors.
This document presents the results of a question included in the Spring 2017 wave of the survey on behalf of
ONeil Policy Consulting, Inc. The question was asked of 319 Democratic voters, defined as those who are
registered to vote as Democrats in the state or who voted for the Democratic Presidential ticket in the 2016
election. The survey was conducted with Mainers between April 8 and April 25, 2017.
With a total sample of 319 respondents, results presented here have an associated sampling error of
+/- 5.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
On average, the entire survey instrument was 20 minutes in administrative length including both general-
interest items and all proprietary subscriber items.
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Proprietary Results
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None of the tested Democratic candidates for Governor is particularly well-known:
only four out of ten Democratic voters are able to make a first choice in a ranked-
choice vote among the five candidates, three out of ten are able to make a second
choice, and about two out of ten can make a third, fourth, or fifth choice.
Democratic Primary Selection
Percent Able to Make Choice in Each Round
First Choice 39%
Tested Candidates
Adam Cote
Second Choice 29% Matt Dunlap
Mark Eves
Janet Mills
Third Choice 24% John Richardson
Fourth Choice 21%
Fifth Choice 18%
(n=319)
Among all democratic voters
If you had to choose, which one of the following people would you support in a democratic primary for governor of
Maine? If your first/second/third/fourth choice were not an option, who would you vote for? Please indicate if you
do not know enough about any of the remaining individuals to make a selection.
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Among Maine Democratic voters who are able to make a first choice
among the candidates tested, half would place their first vote for Janet
Mills. No more than two out of ten would vote for any other candidate
first.
Democratic Primary Selection
Janet Mills 49% 22% 14% 12% 14%
Mark Eves 19% 26% 20% 21% 21%
Matt Dunlap 14% 22% 31% 15% 21%
John Richardson 11% 17% 19% 27% 18%
Adam Cote 7% 12% 17% 25% 26%
% First Choice (n=125) % Second Choice (n=93) % Third Choice (n=74) % Fourth Choice (n=64) Fifth Choice (n=52)
Among those who would be able to make a choice in each round of voting
If you had to choose, which one of the following people would you support in a democratic primary for governor of
Maine? If your first/second/third/fourth choice were not an option, who would you vote for? Please indicate if you
do not know enough about any of the remaining individuals to make a selection.
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Among all Democratic voters, two out of ten would select Janet Mills as
their first choice among the tested candidates for governor. Roughly
five percent would select any of the other candidates as a subsequent
choice.
Democratic Primary Selection
Janet Mills 19% 6% 3% 3% 3%
Mark Eves 7% 8% 5% 4% 4%
Matt Dunlap 5% 6% 7% 3% 4%
John Richardson 4% 5% 5% 6% 3%
Adam Cote 3% 4% 4% 5% 5%
% First Choice % Second Choice % Third Choice % Fourth Choice Fifth Choice (n=319)
Among all democratic voters
If you had to choose, which one of the following people would you support in a democratic primary for governor of
Maine? If your first/second/third/fourth choice were not an option, who would you vote for? Please indicate if you
do not know enough about any of the remaining individuals to make a selection.
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Across all rounds of voting, however, Janet Mills has only a
slight edge in vote preference.
Democratic Primary Selection
(Percent Who Would Vote for Candidate at all)
Janet Mills 34%
Mark Eves 28%
Matt Dunlap 26%
John Richardson 22%
Adam Cote 20%
(n=319)
Among all democratic voters
If you had to choose, which one of the following people would you support in a democratic primary for governor of
Maine? If your first/second/third/fourth choice were not an option, who would you vote for? Please indicate if you
do not know enough about any of the remaining individuals to make a selection.
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