Most of Maine’s big contested primaries are going to ranked-choice counts with no candidates expected to secure more than 50% of votes in those races.
In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, Nirav Shah leads with 26.6% of the reported votes at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, followed by Hannah Pingree with 23.4%, Troy Jackson with 21.2%, Shenna Bellows with 20.6% and Angus King III with 8.2%.
Bobby Charles leads the Republican gubernatorial primary with 36.9% of reported votes, while Jonathan Bush at 20.4%, Benjamin Midgley at 20.1% and Garrett Mason at 11.3% round out the top four.
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The Democratic primary for Congressional District 2 has the top three candidates — Joe Baldacci, Matt Dunlap and Jordan Wood — with around 30% of votes each and Paige Loud in a distant fourth with 10.6% of votes.
In ranked-choice voting, if no one finishes with more than 50%, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their voters’ second choices are reallocated to the remaining candidates. This process repeats until a candidate secures a majority of votes.
The Bangor Daily News built a simulator tool using results from a poll of nearly 500 Maine Democrats by SurveyUSA released last week and an analysis of the preference flows to see how the ranked-choice tallies may play out in the gubernatorial primaries. The tool below allows you to set the first-round totals and simulate 10,000 races.
The actual ranked-choice counting process will take place next week.