Maine’s pivotal ranked-choice voting count will stretch into Thursday
By Michael Shepherd, Bangor Daily News Staff
AUGUSTA —
Maine’s ranked-choice voting count to determine the nominees for key gubernatorial and 2nd Congressional District races will stretch into Thursday.
Maine election officials were in a final phase of preparing to run ranked-choice tabulations in last week’s 2026 primaries, reconciling towns’ reported vote totals with a digital record of their ballots. Some towns were not matching up, including South Berwick, where state police were sent to get paper ballots after they could not figure out why the numbers were off.
This is a normal part of the reconciliation process conducted before ranked-choice voting counts. But the office had previously estimated that results could come as early as Wednesday afternoon. Antsy political operatives are working long hours while sitting in cavernous hallways awaiting the vote totals.
On Wednesday afternoon, staff were combing through wardens’ reports and absentee ballot records to ensure every ballot is “accounted for correctly,” Deputy Secretary of State Kate McBrien said, including those that could not be read by tabulators and must be turned into data. If a town reports 500 ballots, the state database must show exactly that number before the count can proceed.
“It’s a time-consuming process,” said McBrien, who was administering the count in place of Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate. “It’s a meticulous process, but it’s really important that everything is right.”
The update came as three marquee races hung in the balance heading into the ranked-choice count. The Democratic gubernatorial primary remains the most volatile, with four candidates still holding plausible paths to victory.
Bellows, who finished fourth in first-round results, retains the single best chance in simulations conducted by the Bangor Daily News using Election Day results and polling data, but only at a 34% chance of winning. Former Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree, former public health chief Nirav Shah and former state Senate President Troy Jackson all remain firmly in contention.
On the Republican side, lawyer and former federal official Bobby Charles enters the tabulation with a sizable first-round lead and is a strong favorite in simulations, though rivals Ben Midgley and Jonathan Bush are locked in a tight battle for the chance to face him in a final round.
In the Democratic primary for the open seat in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, state Sen. Joe Baldacci holds a first-round edge and a clear advantage in modeled scenarios, but State Auditor Matt Dunlap and former political operative Jordan Wood remain viable if transfers break their way. Former Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, looms for the winner.
The secretary of state’s office plans to announce the winners and the order of candidate eliminations when it runs the tabulations on Thursday. Later, there will be a detailed report showing how votes moved through each round.