t was once said that ''as Maine goes, so goes the nation.''
The saying was coined at the peak of the state's 19th-century temperance movement, in an era when New England shaped national opinion on fundamental issues from slavery to child labor to women's suffrage.
Nowadays, however, New England is often seen more as a political curiosity than a national trendsetter. Even that old slogan has long been a joke - ever since Republican presidential candidate Alfred M. Landon carried only Maine and Vermont in 1936, causing him to ruefully quip that, ''As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.''
Indeed, it now seems that the six New England states share far more in common with one another than with the rest of America. As the nation's population has shifted South and West and its politics have grown increasingly conservative, New England has remained aloof from it all. Its Democrats make no apologies for their liberalism, its Republicans are largely indifferent to the religious right, and its independent voters reliably upset political predictions.
That insularity has rarely been so clear as it was last week, when Arizona Senator John McCain won four of five Republican primaries in New England - three of them by more than 20 percentage points - on a day when he was routed from coast to coast by Texas Governor George W. Bush and forced out of the presidential race. (As it happened, Maine was the region's one state to favor Bush, perhaps restoring some credibility to that old slogan.)
Some analysts argue that Tuesday's vote was a regional echo of the Feb. 1 New Hampshire primary, which a surging McCain won by a stunning 19 percentage points.
''The New Hampshire primary became the New England primary,'' said Deborah ''Arnie'' Arnesen, a New Hampshire talk-radio host, contributor to the Globe's New Hampshire Weekly section, and a former Democratic nominee for governor and Congress.
Even so, other analysts said, by the time New England's five other states voted Tuesday it was clear McCain's campaign was faltering. Yet, New Englanders were undeterred, reaffirming the political independence for which they are increasingly known.
In an era when moderate ''New Democrats'' occupy the White House, for instance, New England Democrats are still embodied by old-fashioned liberals like Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Vermont Representative Bernard Sanders, who is an Independent but routinely votes with Democrats.
And as the national GOP is increasingly driven by conservatives and Southerners, most New England Republicans practice politics that would make them Democrats in many other parts of the country.
''The South won the war in the Republican Party,'' said US Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a Republican of a more moderate ilk. ''The Republicans in New England are not with the majority of the Republican leadership.''
The party's local face is defined by the likes of former Massachusetts governor William F. Weld, who challenged the national GOP to liberalize on abortion and gay rights, and Shays, who had fought doggedly for campaign finance reform to the considerable displeasure of his party's leaders.
In another defining moment, four of the five Republican senators to vote against both articles of impeachment against President Clinton last year hailed from New England: Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, James Jeffords of Vermont, and the late John Chafee of Rhode Island.
All of which, observers say, raises the question of why it is that New Englanders seem so unwilling to fall in line with their fellow Americans.
To some, there is a basic and somewhat intangible spirit of independence that has defined the region's outlook since the Boston Tea Party in 1773.
''There is a kind of irreverent streak. They are different; they like to be independent,'' said Boston College historian Thomas O'Connor.
Putting a finer point on it, other analysts point to the average New England voter's high level of education and affluence. Of the six states, only Maine and Vermont are below the national average of adults who have earned a bachelor's degree, and the region as a whole is wealthier than the rest of the country.
''In today's economy, if you've got a lot of education you're probably doing pretty well economically, and you're probably somewhat independent ... [because] you are a high-information voter and like to make decisions for yourself,'' said Ralph Whitehead, a University of Massachusetts professor who has studied national demographics.
But Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, said New England politics is explained less by education than by religion.
''There's no fundamentalist tradition in New England. Voters in New England come from a different stock,'' Gans said. ''A lot of what has happened in the Republican Party in other regions of the country is essentially due to religious fundamentalism.''
Gans said that much of the Republican Party's rightward shift in the South and West has been guided by religious conservatives, many of them evangelical Protestants, who have grown more politically influential in recent decades.
And as Republicans elsewhere move right, Gans added, Democrats have drifted toward the center to compete with them.
While a relative lack of religious fundamentalism in the New England states, except Maine, may explain why New England Republicans have held true to their moderate Yankee roots, some said its rise elsewhere in the country may also be creating an anti-Republican backlash in this highly Catholic region.
O'Connor cited the recent debate over Bush's appearance at South Carolina's Bob Jones University, whose president has denounced Catholics, as an example of why ''Reagan Democrats'' in New England have not stayed with the party through the 1990s and into the new century.
''Have the Reagan Democrats - who I would suggest contain a great many Irish Democrats - become disillusioned with the Bush Republicans?'' O'Connor said. ''Bob Jones may be raising some questions like, `Do we really belong with these guys?'''
It's not only Catholics who look askance at the influence of religious fundamentalists within the GOP, added a University of Massachusetts pollster, Lou DiNatale.
DiNatale said polling showed that McCain's attack on the religious conservative leaders, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, quickly boosted his popularity in New England, even as it seemed to alienate voters elsewhere.
Some observers say New England's disconnection from prevailing political trends is cause for alarm.
''We are losing our influence in Washington,'' Arnesen said. ''We need to figure out how to exercise clout, and the states can't do it alone anymore.''
But others dispute the notion that the region's influence has been diminished. DiNatale notes that population shifts will not affect the region's 12 Senate seats, which give disproportionate clout to an area that accounts for just 6 percent of the US population.
Also, New England's political leaders continue to find themselves at the center, and not the margins, of some of Washington's most important fights.
Kennedy remains widely recognized as one of the Senate's most effective promoters of legislation and a tormentor of congressional conservatives. And as they were during the Clinton impeachment trial, the region's moderate Republicans are often pivotal votes in a Senate where the GOP holds a small majority.
Connecticut's Shays argues that, while the region's moderates may receive few favors from Republican leaders in Congress, they are the ones more closely aligned with the general public on issues such as abortion, gun control, and campaign finance reform.
''Republicans in New England are pretty much in the middle of the spectrum,'' Shays said. ''To a Republican in Alaska, we're not. But to an average American we are.''
