Race for Golden’s open House seat in Maine heads to ranked choice voting

The race for the Maine House seat represented by outgoing Rep. Jared Golden (D) is headed to ranked choice voting, the Maine secretary of state’s office announced Thursday.

The office noted Republican candidate Paul LePage received 170,263 votes, just shy of 50 percent, while Democrat Matt Dunlap received 164,845 votes, roughly 48 percent. There were more than 6,000 blank votes and 123 votes for write-in candidates.

Because no candidate received more than half of the vote outright during the first round, the race for Maine’s 2nd District will head to ranked choice voting, which the office said will begin Monday.

LePage claimed an early victory even though no call has been made.

“The first step in the process will to be to verify the vote totals from every municipality to ensure accuracy,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) said in a statement. “Once the election night totals are verified, assuming neither candidate received a majority of the votes, which is what we are observing now, we will proceed to the ranked choice voting tabulation.”

Brent Littlefield, a senior adviser to LePage, said he had been in contact with Bellows and reiterated that the former Maine governor was still the winner of the Maine House district.

“I have spoken with Secretary of State Bellows and we are aware initial indications show a small number of blank votes and write-ins for this race may trigger Ranked Choice Voting based on their interpretation of law,” Littlefield said in a statement . “It is very clear from our campaign team’s work yesterday talking one-on-one with local town clerks, and the publicly available numbers, that Paul LePage is the Congressman-Elect.”

The Hill has reached out to Dunlap’s campaign for comment.

Alaska and Maine are the only two states to use ranked choice voting statewide.

Voters are asked to rank their choices for the office. If no candidate gets the majority of first-choice votes, the lowest-scoring candidate is eliminated and the results are retallied, using the second choice from voters whose first pick was knocked out.

Maine’s system was implemented in 2018 after voters approved it on a 2016 ballot measure .

President Trump won Golden’s district by 9 percentage points in 2024 , making it one of Democrats’ most vulnerable seats to protect during the midterms.

Decision Desk HQ has already projected that Democrats will win back the House and are poised to win more than 250 seats, though a handful of races have yet to be called.

Julia Mueller contributed . Updated at 12:57 p.m. EST.