The 1982 Maine gubernatorial election took place on November 2, 1982. Incumbent Democratic Governor Joseph Brennan defeated Republican challenger Charles R. Cragin. Brennan defeated Cragin, winning his re-election by the highest percent margin in more than thirty years.
Brennan would be challenged in the Democratic primary by Lewiston state representative Georgette Berube, but would easily dispatch her. Cragin defeated Falmouth state representative Sherry Huber and Waterville state senator Richard Pierce in the GOP primary. Berube and Huber would be the first women to ever run for Governor of Maine.
The 281,066 votes received by Brennan represented the single highest vote total for governor in Maine history, until the election of Governor Paul LePage in 2014. Brennan's coattails allowed Democrats to win the first trifecta in the state since 1913. This was the first time a gubernatorial candidate won a majority of the vote since 1970, and the last time a gubernatorial candidate would win a majority of the vote until 1998. This was the only Maine gubernatorial election between 1970 and 2022 that no third-party or independent candidate received at least 5% of the vote.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “1982 Maine gubernatorial election”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.