BY MATT WICKENHEISER

Portland Press Herald

Roll out a map of Maine and mark off all the counties where the majority voted "no" on Question 1, voting to uphold the state's new same-sex marriage law.

It won't take you long.

Only three of Maine's 16 counties went against the proposal on Tuesday's ballot to overturn the law passed by lawmakers and signed by the governor in May. In one of the three, the margin was less than 2 percentage points.

With 98 percent of the state's precincts reporting, Mainers voted to repeal the law allowing same-sex marriage, 298,787 to 267,188. That's a 31,599-vote margin, or 5.6 percentage points.

An examination of how the voting broke down reveals few of the common explanations for why the "yes" vote won. It wasn't a rural-versus-urban, Republican-versus-Democrat or southern-versus-northern vote.

With few exceptions, advocates of the repeal simply pulled in a majority of the vote from communities across the state.

Three counties along the coast voted against Question 1.

Cumberland County, with a 26,238-vote margin, was the lone stronghold for advocates of gay marriage. Hancock, far up the coast, voted in favor of same-sex marriage by a margin of about 1,560 votes. Knox, in the midcoast, voted to uphold the law, but the margin was only 316 votes.

From extreme southern Maine to far northern Maine, Down East to the western mountains, 13 counties voted against same-sex marriage.

They were largely rural counties, and counties with some of Maine's largest urban centers -- Penobscot County, with Bangor and Brewer; Kennebec County, with Augusta; Androscoggin County, with Lewiston and Auburn; and York County, with Biddeford and Saco.

It was a stark difference from 2005, when Mainers rejected a proposal to repeal new anti-discrimination laws that applied to sexual orientation. Fifty-five percent voted against the repeal.

Nine counties rejected it and seven supported it. Generally, the counties that rejected it ran in a strip up the coast, while the more rural, interior counties voted for it.

This year, "some of the more rural counties just blew out for the 'yes' folks," said Ted O'Meara, who advised the Maine Won't Discriminate campaign in 2005.

"It just looks like the No on 1 side wasn't able to build up the margin in the areas that worked well in 2005 to overcome the real rout in some of the rural counties."

The debate about same-sex marriage is sometimes framed in terms of political parties, with Democrats seen as supporters and Republicans as opponents.

In Maine, only six counties had more registered Republicans than Democrats in the latest listing on the secretary of state's Web site, from about a year ago: Franklin, Hancock, Knox, Lincoln, Piscataquis and Waldo.

Two of the three counties that voted against Question 1 are on that list. Nine of the 10 counties that voted for repeal have more Democrats than Republicans.

In Cumberland County, Portland, the state's liberal center, voted strongly in support of same-sex marriage, 20,085 to 7,242, a difference of 47 percentage points. Two neighboring cities, Westbrook and South Portland, also voted against the repeal.

Only a few of Maine's other large communities voted "no." Bangor voted against repeal, by about 900 votes, as did Saco, by about 600 votes.

Others -- Lewiston, Auburn, Augusta, Brewer and Biddeford, for example -- voted against the law.

The biggest margin was in Lewiston, where 7,300 voted for repeal and 5,121 voted against it.

Around the state, small towns brought in the "yes" votes.

Lisbon went 2,542 to 1,469 against same-sex marriage, a 27-point difference. Turner voted 1,510 for "yes" and 866 for "no." Jay had 813 more votes for "yes" than for "no," a 37-point margin. Van Buren, in the St. John Valley, voted 535 to 186 for the veto, a 44-point margin.

Religion apparently played a role in the vote.

There are about 200,000 Catholics in Maine, with the church considering about 30 percent of them "active." Three areas are considered very Catholic -- Lewiston, Biddeford and far northern Aroostook County. All of those areas supported the repeal.

Also, there are small, evangelical churches throughout small-town Maine that are a big part of those communities.

"There is a network out there that I think a lot of the mainstream kind of overlooks," O'Meara said, "but they've clearly shown they're still very much a force."

John Baughman, chairman of the political science department at Bates College in Lewiston, said the strongest division about same-sex marriage nationally is along generational lines.

"Communities that tend to be older, I think you'll find, will be the ones on the whole that are less likely to support marriage equality," he said.