By Bob Benenson

Before the past four, how many presidential races did Republicans ever lose in Maine?

a) 3

b) 5

c) 7

d) 9

Answer: a) The Republicans’ current four-election losing streak in Maine, which began with Bill Clinton’s first win in 1992, exceeds by one the total number of presidential contests they lost from the party’s emergence in 1856 through 1988 — during which the GOP carried the state in 31 out of 34 elections.

The only Democrats to win during that period were Woodrow Wilson, who carried Maine in 1912 with 39 percent of the vote as former President Theodore Roosevelt, running on the Progressive Party line, and GOP incumbent William Howard Taft split the Republican vote; President Lyndon B. Johnson, who included Maine among the 44 states he won in his 1964 landslide over Republican Barry Goldwater; and Hubert H. Humphrey, the incumbent vice president, who followed that up in 1968 by defeating Republican Richard M. Nixon in Maine.

It was the New Deal era of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt that truly epitomized Maine as a stronghold of “Yankee Republicanism.” Maine voted against FDR in all four of his presidential wins, beginning in 1932, and joined Vermont as the only states that favored Republican Alf Landon in 1936.

But the long-dormant state Democratic Party rose to competitiveness beginning in the 1950s, led by Edmund S. Muskie, who served a long Senate tenure, was the vice presidential nominee on the 1968 ticket headed by Humphrey, staged an unsuccessful bid for the 1972 presidential nomination and later served as secretary of State.

In recent years, the Democrats have held the upper hand in Maine presidential politics as state voters, like most of those throughout New England, turned against the conservative wing’s rise to dominance in the Republican Party.

The GOP’s winning ways in presidential politics were suspended after the 1988 victory by President George Bush, well known for his vacation compound in the coastal town of Kennebunkport. By 1992, Bush would finish third in the state, narrowly behind independent Ross Perot and well behind Democrat Bill Clinton. Clinton in 1996, incumbent Vice President Al Gore in 2000 and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in 2004 all carried the state by comfortable margins, the latter by 54 percent to 45 percent over President George W. Bush . Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , this year’s presumed Democratic nominee, is favored in Maine over his Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain .

But a state in which more voters are independents than either registered Democrats or registered Republicans — and which elected independents James B. Longley in 1974 and Angus King in 1994 and 1998 for governor — has kept an open mind toward Republicans with centrist profiles. They include both U.S. senators, Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins , the latter of whom faces a tough contest this year with Democratic Rep. Tom Allen .