Election 2026
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A ranked-choice count will not necessarily keep the Bangor Daily News from calling Maine’s closest races after Tuesday’s election.
The BDN and its national election results partner, Decision Desk HQ, call a race when we are confident the leading candidate cannot be overtaken. That standard holds even if blank ballots and six write-in candidates keep the U.S. Senate race between U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and Democrat Troy Jackson goes to a count in Augusta that will not finish until next week.
Maine may be on the verge of its first statewide ranked-choice count in a general election, and control of Congress could hinge on it. Decision Desk HQ’s final Tuesday forecast rated the Senate race as leaning Democratic and gave Jackson a 64% chance of unseating Collins. It gave Democrats the same odds of winning the Senate and rated the 2nd District as a toss-up.
Decision Desk HQ, our partner since 2018, assigns races to panels of experts who compare incoming results with the ballots left to count. People make the calls, not models, and only at greater than 99% certainty. That process made the BDN the first U.S. newspaper to call the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, a day before The Associated Press.
Ranked-choice voting makes Maine’s math a little more complicated. Only first choices are counted on election night. If no candidate wins a majority, ballot information is collected statewide and checked against election-night tallies before a central count in Augusta the following week.
That timeline can slip. In June, the count for two major primaries finished about a day later than expected after stop-and-start announcements from Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ office, drawing complaints from campaigns in both parties.
This year’s ranked-choice count would cover only federal races. In April, Maine’s high court issued an advisory ruling saying ranked-choice voting could not be used in general elections for governor and the Legislature. Those races are decided by simple pluralities.
Blank ballots and write-in votes can keep a leading candidate just short of a majority even when the outcome is not in doubt. A call then turns on whether the leader’s margin is larger than the pool of ballots that could still move in later rounds.
In 2020, Collins trailed Democrat Sara Gideon in every independent public poll but opened a wide lead on election night. We called the race for her at 1:12 p.m. the next day, once it was clear she would avoid a ranked-choice count.
But the 2024 race in Maine’s 2nd District showed that a count does not have to delay a call. Blank ballots and one write-in candidate left U.S. Rep. Jared Golden just under a majority against Republican Austin Theriault. We called it for Golden at 1:25 p.m. the day after Election Day, on the judgment that the blank ballots would matter little.
Ballot records later proved us right. Only a sliver of voters who skipped a first choice ranked anyone after that, while backup choices on write-in ballots broke heavily for Golden.
A call is an unofficial prediction. It’s based on the preliminary information clerks give us, and campaigns can still ask for recounts or go to court. In October, the Justice Department sued to block Alaska, the other state that uses ranked-choice voting in general elections, from certifying its Senate result.
If a race is too close to know how the later rankings will break, we will wait for the count. We will also tell you on election night when a race appears headed to one, as we did for several primaries in June. And we will tell you the winner as soon as it’s responsible.