Maine 2nd District Goes to a Ranked Choice Count, With LePage Ahead and No Majority

Maine's 2nd Congressional District race will be decided by a ranked choice count after no candidate won a majority of first choice votes in the November 3 general election, the Maine Secretary of State's office announced on Thursday.

As reported by Maine's 487 municipalities, 341,248 ballots were cast in the race. Republican Paul LePage received 170,263 votes, or 49.894 percent. Democrat Matthew Dunlap received 164,845 votes, or 48.307 percent. Declared write-in candidates received 123 votes, and 6,017 ballots were blank. LePage, a former governor, leads Dunlap, the state auditor, by 5,418 votes. The Associated Press had not called the race as of Thursday.

Tabulation starts Monday in Augusta

The ranked choice tabulation will begin on Monday, November 9, 2026, at 10 a.m. at the Maine Department of Public Safety headquarters at 45 Commerce Drive in Augusta. The process is open to the public and will be livestreamed on the Secretary of State's YouTube page, the office said.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said the first step will be to verify the vote totals from every municipality to ensure accuracy. If the verified totals still show no majority, the office will proceed with the ranked choice tabulation, she said.

Under Maine rules, a candidate must receive more than 50 percent of first choice votes to win outright. In a ranked choice count, votes are tabulated in rounds, with the lowest ranked candidate eliminated in each round, until two candidates remain. The candidate with a majority in the final round is declared the winner. Maine has no mandatory recounts, and the losing candidate may request a hand recount after the tabulation.

Dunlap's path is narrow, analysis says

An analysis by the Bangor Daily News found that Dunlap's path to catching LePage is narrow. There were 6,140 ballots that were blank or cast for write-in candidates, and Dunlap would have to come out of that pool alone with a net gain bigger than LePage's entire 5,418 vote margin.

The district's 2024 runoff suggests few of those ballots will move, the newspaper reported. That year, almost 91 percent of blank and write-in ballots dropped out of the count, and just 380 out of more than 10,000 blank ballots ended up with a candidate. A repeat of that pattern would shift fewer than 300 ballots, leaving Dunlap behind by more than 5,000 votes even if every one went his way, the analysis found. The newspaper also reported that Dunlap likely would not get within the 1.5 percentage point margin required for a recount paid for by the state.

LePage claimed victory before a call

LePage claimed victory at a news conference on November 4 at the Sea Dog in Bangor, before the race had been called. Dunlap said at the time that the race was still too close to call.

The 2nd District covers more than 27,000 square miles and is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi River, according to the Secretary of State's office. It includes all municipalities in Androscoggin, Aroostook, Franklin, Hancock, Oxford, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Somerset, Waldo and Washington counties, and part of Kennebec County.

This is the third ranked choice runoff for the district, the Bangor Daily News reported. In 2018, Jared Golden took the seat with a come from behind runoff win over Republican Representative Bruce Poliquin, whose court challenge was rejected by US District Judge Lance Walker. In 2024, Golden beat Republican state Representative Austin Theriault in a runoff, and a recount upheld the outcome.