With the final recount finishing up last week and the beginning of 2011 next week, we can now finally turn the page on the November 2010 election in Maine... but not before we announce the full results of the Down East/Kennebec Journal election prediction pool.

The charts below are the results of 85 valid entries, the most participants I've ever had. The results used to judge accuracy come from the Bangor Daily News and the Secretary of State's recount announcements.

Now that political operative Dennis Bailey has admitted his role in authoring the Cutler Files, an attack site launched during the campaign against independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler, and the Lewiston Sun Journal reports that they have confirmed the identity of the second author as Thom Rhoads, husband to former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rosa Scarcelli, now may be a good time to look back and see what these two and others said about the site over the past few months.

Democrats and political observers are coming down hard on Governor-elect Paul LePage for the decision to appoint his 22-year-old daughter, Lauren LePage, to a position in his administration making $41,000 a year.

The hiring, first reported by the Bangor Daily News, was quickly attacked as a "brazen display of political nepotism" by Maine Democratic Party executive director Mary Erin Casale.

A statement Governor-elect Paul LePage made about national health care reform and printed Sunday in the MaineToday newspapers has drawn national attention and has resulted in attempts from his staff to "clarify" LePage's remarks.

Interviewed in Washington, LePage apparently claimed that he had just learned that if thirty-five states join the lawsuit to repeal federal health care reform, the law "dies, automatically.”

Student representatives at the University of Maine yesterday spoke publicly in favor of the federal DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented young people to gain citizenship through service in the military or a college education.

The UMaine Student Government pased a resolution on the issue, which reads in part:

The Maine House and Senate were sworn in Wednesday and began the work of the 125th Legislature.

One of the first orders of business was to elect Kevin Raye as President of the Senate and Robert Nutting as Speaker of the House. The nominations of both Republicans were seconded by the respective Democratic floor leaders.

Republican leaders in the Maine House and Senate have delayed plans to eliminate the Labor Committee from the list of Joint Select Committees within the Maine Legislature.

The Labor committee has existed since 1887 and is responsible for overseeing the Maine Department of Labor, workforce development, wage and hour laws, labor relations, workplace health and safety, and the state retirement system, among other areas.

Pete Harring, perhaps better known as Pete the Carpenter, is a Tea Party leader, owner of the Maine Refounders Web site, and one of the angriest and most inflammatory people in Maine politics.

Since he was nominated by the Republican House caucus as their candidate for Speaker last week, a steady drumbeat of stories from Maine media outlets have shed light on the investigation, legal proceedings and subsequent bankruptcy of Rep. Bob Nutting's pharmacy earlier this decade.

Despite his recent public statements and the op-ed he wrote for today's Wall Street Journal arguing against Maine's absentee and early voting program, Eliot Cutler himself has a history of voting early.