Maine is one of the most politically engaged states in the country, according to a new national survey.

But the WalletHub analysis issued this week doesn’t necessarily reflect reality, said Daniel Shea, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement at Colby College.

Shea said the study may have some merit in showcasing Maine’s engagement with voting, but it’s not nearly as clear that the state’s residents are especially involved in politics in a more general sense.

Politics, he said, are “not on everyone’s minds down at the coffee shop” most of the time.

The report by WalletHub, a personal finance site, said that Maine is the fourth most politically engaged state, trailing only Colorado, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

WalletHub said it looked into civic participation because it is “a key ingredient of a well-functioning democracy” and there is evidence of “a growing lack of political engagement among Americans.”

It said Maine had the most voters of any state show up for the midterm election in 2014, probably an indication of the interest in Gov. Paul LePage’s re-election bid, and high marks for civic education, voter accessibility and participation by registered voters in the 2012 presidential race.

Maine scored lowest on its political contributions, figured on a per person basis. It came in 30th in the nation in that category, which states with many wealthy residents led.

Shea said same-day voter registration, which bolsters turnout, helped push Maine’s scores a bit higher in many of the categories. He said Maine probably also benefits from its many ballot questions.

Beyond that, he said, “a lot of this might have to do with the progressive politics” of Portland, a place he called “really an activist city” in the same vein as Austin, Texas or Madison, Wisconsin.

Move away from electoral politics, however, and Maine doesn’t strike Shea as especially engaged.

Politics are about more than voting, he said. It also includes talking about issues with friends and neighbors, attending school board meetings and writing letters to the editor.

Shea said people across America “are deeply engaged on one level” with the political system: their growing partisanship, something that has deepened during the past 15 years.

One result, he said, is a shared cynicism about the country’s institutions and leaders. She said people are feeling frustrated about the possibility of change, something that social media stokes as well.

Shea said lowering our levels of cynicism would help.

A sharper focus on the skills of citizenship in school could also make a difference, he said. Teaching students how to attend meetings, approach legislators, write letters and such would contribute to making them better citizens.

Shea said Americans were much more enmeshed in their government and politics back in the 19th century. At the time, he said, there were deep levels of engagement spurred by a partisan press and vibrant political parties rooted in their communities.

The “slow, steady assault on local political parties” that began more than a century ago with the progressive movement has cut away one of the main things that used to connect ordinary people to their government, Shea said.

“If they fade away, there’s a vacuum,” he said, and is one part of the explanation why only about 55 percent of voters turn out for even big elections.

WalletHub said it paid the most attention to voter turnout in its study.

It said that to determine the most and least politically engaged states, it used seven key metrics to create a 100-point scale, with the most weight given to the percentage of the electorate who voted in the 2012 and 2014 elections “because these tend to be the strongest indicators of civic participation.”

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