Robert McCarthy has been paying close attention to the flurry of executive orders and actions during the first two months since President Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Like many Mainers who voted for Trump, the 68-year-old former Lewiston city councilor likes what he sees and views the drastic policy shifts on everything from immigration to education to the economy as the president making good on his word.

“I think Trump is trying to accomplish everything that he’s promised, and the Democrats are fighting him tooth and nail,” said McCarthy, a former production manager at the Sun Journal. “It’s a difficult process because there are so many obscure rules, regulations and everything else. But so far, so good.” 

While the dizzying pace of the Trump administration’s efforts to remake government has created anxiety for some and galvanized opposition from Democrats, new polling and interviews with nearly a dozen Trump voters in Maine found an overwhelming majority of Republicans see promises made during the campaign becoming promises kept.

A poll from the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center found that 94% of Maine Republicans approve of Trump’s performance in office so far, a slight drop from 98% of Republican support in February. Less than half of all Maine voters, 42%, and just 1% of Democrats feel the same.

Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, said rises and falls in approval ratings are typical when the presidency switches parties.

“Disapproval has gone up a little bit, approval has gone down a little bit, but kind of in the way you’d expect as events have gone on,” he said. 

Some Trump voters in Maine said recent scandals, like veterans being laid off en masse by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the leak of detailed war plans discussed in a group chat by senior administration officials, gave them cause for concern.

Still, nearly all expressed support for the majority of Trump’s actions so far and optimism for the next three years of his second term, especially on culture issues and immigration.

MAINE ON TRUMP’S RADAR

Maine has become a battleground in an ongoing culture war after Trump clashed with Gov. Janet Mills over state law that codifies transgender athletes’ right to compete in high school sports.

The president threatened to revoke Maine’s federal funding if Mills didn’t comply with his executive order that runs contrary to state law. His administration halted funds to the University of Maine System, canceled millions of dollars in Sea Grant funding and abruptly ended the decades-old program that allows parents to register their newborns for a Social Security number while at hospitals. Each decision was reversed within days or weeks.

Many Maine Trump voters believe the president is on the right side and see his aggressive approach as the correct one, even if it could have adverse effects on their state in the meantime.

Pete Harring, who lives in the small Knox County town of Washington, said he became a true Trump supporter in 2024 after hesitantly voting for him in 2020 and writing in Rand Paul during the 2016 election. He was an organizer with the Maine Tea Party in the 2010s and still has a Libertarian streak, but came to support Trump in large part for his attitude on similar cultural issues.

“I like his thought process. I like the fact that he’s an alpha male. There’s no doubt that he’s an alpha male. We need an alpha in charge,” Harring said. “I have turned into a Trump supporter from being apprehensive, but I’m not going to blindly follow the guy.”

Hank Poirier traveled to Augusta from Waterville last week to support legislation that would ease firearm restrictions and oppose any bills that would strengthen them. He wore a shirt with Abraham Lincoln’s face and a pin that read “GUN RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS.”

Poirier said he supports Trump on nearly every issue and has disdain for Democrats over their stance on social issues like gun control and transgender athletes.

“Janet Mills cannot protect women. It’s an 80% to 20% issue; people say men should not be in women’s sports,” Poirier said. “But it’s not the only reason why I support President Trump. … Border crossings are down 95%. They’re adjusting taxes, the economy, regulations, they’re addressing foreign policy, and certainly energy, too.”

The UNH poll found 65% of Mainers believe transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports. National polls from Pew Research Center found about the same, 66%.

While Trump has stoked cultural flashpoints for political benefit, some of his voters and supporters wish he would rein in the rhetoric. Recent events are placing lingering doubts into the backs of some supporters’ minds.

CRACKS IN THE BASE?

Trump’s national approval ratings have slipped in the two months since he took office and, though Republicans still overwhelmingly support the president, some of the administration’s actions are giving supporters pause.

Harring was a big fan of the Cabinet that Trump put together, but said the leak of top-secret war plans through a group chat of high-level officials has shaken that. He’s especially concerned if those officials used a public platform rather than government channels to avoid transparency, as some have speculated.

“It pisses me off,” he said. “Our government is a government of ‘We the People,’ and if it’s not classified information, then it’s public information and we the people should be privy to see it.”

Harring also thinks Trump and Musk are exaggerating claims of fraud among federal workers, judges and department heads. He supports the administration’s efforts to slash budgets and workforces in theory, but thinks their chainsaw-style tactics could be carried out more delicately.

“They keep saying that they keep finding fraud, but I haven’t seen anyone dragged away in handcuffs,” Harring said. “Fraud is illegal. … I truly believe there’s fraud, probably on both sides of the aisle, and we need to do something about it.”

Then there’s questions of Trump’s behavior. His public clashes and feuds with foreign leaders, state governors, journalists, critics and dissenters — which have become more commonplace in his second term — were cited by several supporters as their main qualm with the president.

Scott Greaney, 60, runs a turkey farm in Mercer. His pickup truck has MAGA and Infowars.com bumper stickers and he wears a hoodie reading “QUESTION EVERYTHING, TRUST NO ONE,” purchased from the conspiracy website’s founder, Alex Jones.

Greaney generally supports the president’s efforts but thinks Trump’s tenor and some of his actions can be unnecessarily juvenile and petty.

“One of the things that kind of tweaked me a little bit was, he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America,” Greaney said. “Why? That’s like, what are you, in seventh grade? It just seems like he did that to irk some people.”

Trump’s boastful tendencies were suitable when he was a TV star before taking office, Greaney said, but now he represents all Americans and needs to start acting like it.

“Sometimes he says some stupid things,” he said. “It’s OK when you’re running a real estate company, but he’s running the country.”

IMMIGRATION

Many Trump voters in Maine and around the country cite immigration as their top concern and approve of Trump’s policies so far. In interviews, many cited his calls for mass deportations of illegal immigrants as one of their key factors in voting for him, even though Maine isn’t a hot spot for illegal border crossings compared with both the southern border and elsewhere on the northern border.

Crossings at the southern border have also continued a downward trend from Joe Biden’s presidency, falling over 90% since February 2024 and more sharply since Trump’s inauguration. 

Sabrina Potter-Williamson volunteers with older adults and Fairfield’s community at the Victor Grange #49. She spends her days bringing blankets, food and supplies to homeowners plagued by rickety staircases and heating problems.

The 56-year-old said she wants to support Americans and veterans before illegal immigrants. She agrees with Trump that illegal immigrants need to be deported.

“I agree that taking and trying to get some of the population down and sending the illegal ones – that don’t want to become legal – back,” she said. “I’m glad that he’s pushing that faster, but I’m just hoping that our country will start helping our own countrymen for now.”

Greaney, the turkey farmer in Mercer, believes social services in cities like Portland and Boston are overwhelmed with immigrants and lack resources to help them. Bringing in more people, he says, would overload an already taxed system.

“We had to get a grip on the people coming over the border, flooding the border,” he said. “They’re really taxing the hospitals and social service departments and stuff. I mean, they’re just not set up to handle these people.”

In late 2023, Portland opened a shelter specifically for asylum seekers to provide more adequate services and free up beds at the city’s Homeless Services Center. While the number of immigrants has risen in the state, it’s still small compared with the rest of the country. 

Just 53,000 of Maine’s 1,405,000 residents — or about 4% — are immigrants, per 2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimates. About 25,000 of them, less than 2% of Maine’s total population, are not citizens. 

ECONOMY

Though American industries rely on seasonal immigrant labor for agricultural and factory jobs, many Trump voters aren’t worried that increased deportations will adversely affect the economy.

Retired veteran and Fairfield resident Kevin Kitchin agrees with Trump that fewer immigrants, more tariffs and a smaller federal government are what the economy needs, although he acknowledged it will take time to see the effects.

The stock market jumped in the wake of Trump’s election victory, but an escalating trade war with American allies has since erased those gains. Even if Trump’s actions create hardship, Kitchin says it will be temporary and beneficial in the long run.

“When the stock market goes down, that kind of excites me a little bit, because that means that we can buy stock cheap, and it’s going to come back up, history has shown, which means we’re going to make money,” he said.

McCarthy, in Lewiston, said shrinking the federal government would save taxpayers money and stimulate the economy. He cited the abolition of the Department of Education in particular as a vital cost-cutting move.

“I love the fact that they’re getting rid of the Department of Education. Since its inception in the late ’70s, all of the factors around how well students are doing have continually gone down,” he said. “Obviously, it’s not accomplishing anything and it’s just wasting money.”

Others similarly see the economy improving. Potter-Williamson, the Fairfield volunteer, said she supports Trump in large part for his promises to bring down the cost of eggs and gas and thinks his policies are already working to that end.

“Prices going down for people. That’s exactly what I’m hoping for,” she said. “I’m not very political when it comes to the government. It’s more my town, because it’s closer to what I have to deal with.”

The cost of gas is down about $0.08 per gallon from last month, according to AAA data, although there is no indication that drop is attributable to Trump or his policies. The average price of eggs, however, remains among the highest it has ever been: $5.90 a dozen, per a CNBC analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That spike is largely due to the bird flu outbreak impacting farms across the country.

‘JUST GO WHERE THE POWER IS’

The UNH survey found that Maine voters are as divided as they’ve ever been on the president. Trump has near-unanimous support from his own party and almost universal opposition from the other.

Smith, the polling director, says that phenomenon is nothing new. Americans’ perception of everything from their finances to the direction of the country is dictated by whether their preferred party is in charge.

“How people view what the president is doing is so colored by partisanship that it’s almost not worth looking at the overall number,” he said. “When Biden was in office, those numbers were about flip-flopped. We’re just seeing partisanship reflected in their evaluations of the presidency.”

What is a relatively new phenomenon, Smith said, is the closing of a divide within the MAGA base. Historically, Trump’s wing of the Republican Party has clashed with traditional conservatives, but many of those traditionalists have either held their nose and voted for Trump or become full-fledged supporters in recent years, Smith said.

“They suck it up, but they just go where the power is. The most important thing for political parties is to win elections,” Smith said. “I would argue the previous governor, Paul LePage, was similar to Trump in that he divided his party. You saw a lot of Republicans who were more the Susan Collins type of Republicans, who were more willing to support LePage just because he wasn’t a Democrat.”

Even though most people’s material realities haven’t changed much, if at all, since the election, Smith said, many people feel that things have either gotten substantially better or worse in the months since.

He likened the transition from a Democratic to a Republican president to a trade between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.

“What’s the difference between those two teams? Nothing, really. They’re both big corporate giants, and they play the same sport,” Smith explained. “But when a player, say Johnny Damon, is on the Red Sox, the Red Sox fans think he’s a great guy, wild hair and all that. When he goes to the Yankees, they think he’s a bum, and he was a terrible leadoff hitter and never had a good arm. But he’s the same guy!”

Smith said he believes Trump’s approval ratings will continue to erode as they have since his inauguration. The economy is the largest driver of political sentiments, he said, and with economists in agreement that Trump’s sweeping tariffs will hurt American consumers, his approval ratings could drop swiftly in the coming months.

Many Maine Trump voters interviewed in the last week shared similar sentiments: Even if they supported the president, he isn’t infallible. Especially after nearly a decade in national politics, Trump’s allure as an outsider is fading. As Greaney, the turkey farmer, put it, “He’s another politician.”

“Any politician is like handling a snake: You’ve got to be careful,” he said. “Keep your eye on them. They might not be poisonous, but they can still give you a pretty good bite.”

NOTE: This story has been edited to remove factually incorrect information that was provided by a source who was interviewed.

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