Only 5.49 of university and college professors working in Maine are registered Republicans, according to an analysis of professorial political affiliations conducted by the Maine Wire.
The analysis, which included professors at Maine’s UMaine system campuses as well as Bowdoin, Colby, Bates, Husson, St. Joseph’s College, and Thomas College, found that the majority of professors were registered Democrats, while large percentages were either not registered to vote or unaffiliated with any political party.
The Maine Wire conducted the investigation into the state’s higher ed institutions using a combination of publicly available information and a voter information database. The methodology used is described in greater detail at the end of this post.
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Results
Overall, we looked into the political affiliations of 2,222 college professors and lecturers. Out of those, 1,213 are registered Democrats, amounting to 54.63 percent. Initially, the percentage of Democrats seems to suggest a relatively balanced political landscape among professors. The rest of the data show otherwise.
While roughly half of professors are Democrats, the other half is not made up primarily of Republicans. The second-largest category, 452 professors, making up 20.29 percent of the total, consists of educators not registered to vote. This category likely includes non-citizen professors, visiting professors from out of state, and the apolitical.
Unaffiliated voters, with 362 professors accounting for 16.28 percent, comprised the next largest category. These unaffiliated professors are registered to vote but declined to register explicitly with any party. As with the unregistered professors, we cannot determine the political leanings of the unaffiliated voters based on the registration database.
Republicans make up a measly 5.49 percent of professors, with only 122 registered Republicans teaching at any major college or university in the state. Although only slightly over half of professors are registered Democrats, they make up nearly ten times more of the total educators than Republicans.
While it’s impossible to determine to what extent a professors personal political biases seep into the classroom, the Maine Wire investigation would seem to support the common claim that higher education is skewed strongly in favor of the left.
The rest of the professors were registered with the Green Party (36 professors or 1.62 percent), the No Labels Party (7 professors or 0.31 percent), and the Libertarian Party (just one professor or 0.045 percent). Just 18 professors were indeterminable.
Maine students may be interested to learn the political affiliations of an institution’s professors before deciding to spend four years and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars studying under them.
The taxpayer-funded UMaine Law has the least conservative representation among its professors, with not a single registered Republican on its teaching staff. The law school boasts of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program on its front page and celebrates its work with “asylum seekers.” They also offer a certificate class in “public interest and social justice.”
The University of Maine at Presque Isle has the most Republicans by percentage, with 29.41 percent and 10 professors, compared with 14 professors making up 41.18 percent of the teaching staff.
The UMaine System as a whole is largely aligned with the total political makeup of the schools investigated. Overall, it has 585 Democrats comprising 55.40 percent of the school, and 74 Republicans at 7.01 percent.
The private colleges also skewed strongly in favor of Democratic professors. Bowdoin had the fewest registered Republicans of any private college in the analysis, with just four Republicans comprising 1.51 percent of the faculty. The 149 Democrats on Bowdoin’s teaching staff made up 56.23 percent. Those Democratic professors current courses include “Queering International Relations” and “Art and Race from the Crusades to Colonization.”
Although Bowdoin had fewer Republicans on staff than Bates College, Bates had the highest percentage of Democrats among Maine’s major private colleges, with 59.84 percent and 228 professors.
Husson University was by far the least Democrat-dominated college with only 40 Democrats making up 32.52 percent and 18 Republicans making up 14.63 percent.
You can access the full spreadsheet of our investigation’s results here.
Methodology
The investigation included the state’s major private colleges: Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Husson, St. Joseph’s College, and Thomas College, along with all the publicly funded universities in the UMaine system.
It excluded the state’s community colleges, along with more specific or vocational schools, such as the Maine Maritime Academy and the Unity Environmental University.
The investigation also excluded colleges with fewer than 1,000 students, such as Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic, which boasts only 350 students.
We determined the political breakdown of the colleges included in the investigation by looking at the voter registration information of every educator at those institutions.
Educators include lecturers and professors but exclude administrators, sports coaches, and other non-teaching staff.
For the UMaine system, we used their 2024 payroll document and used the job descriptions listed there.
This allowed us to develop a picture of the political leanings of university personnel directly educating students, and often influencing them with their political ideologies.
Each university investigated had some form of directory listing the names of every professor. We then searched for those names in a voter registration database.
