Dr. Nirav Shah, a Democratic candidate for governor, enters Wild Oats Bakery & Cafe in Brunswick on Tuesday. (Daryn Slover/Staff Photographer)
Three of Maine’s highest-profile primary elections will proceed to ranked-choice runoffs this week, with the outcomes set to be determined by whom the supporters of the losing candidates selected as their backup choices.
No candidate in Maine’s gubernatorial primaries and the Democratic primary in the 2nd Congressional District received more than 50% of the vote Tuesday night. Officials with the Maine Department of the Secretary of State, which oversees the runoff process, plan to start the ranked-choice tabulation Friday, with final results expected next week.
In addition to the three races above, the state is still working to determine if any other primary races will require ranked-choice runoffs, the department said Wednesday.
Here are a few things to watch for in the major races headed to runoffs.
TOP DEMS FOR GOVERNOR ARE ALL CLOSE
The Democratic primary for governor yielded exceedingly close results in the first round of voting. As of Wednesday afternoon, with 93% of votes in, according to The Associated Press, former Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Nirav Shah led the field of five candidates with 26.8% of the vote. The next three candidates — Hannah Pingree (23.3%), Troy Jackson (21.0%) and Shenna Bellows (20.7%) are within 7 percentage points of Shah.
Angus King III finished a distant fifth, meaning he will be the first candidate eliminated.
King’s campaign responded to questions about the next steps in the race with a statement Wednesday thanking voters and Mainers who shared their stories and challenges with him. He did not respond to a question about how his supporters’ votes might be redistributed.
King’s roughly 17,000 votes are also not enough to put any of the other candidates over the 50% threshold — even if all of his supporters selected the same second choice.
That means a second candidate will need to be eliminated and their supporters’ backup choices redistributed. With the other four so close, it’s hard to say whom that will be.
Pingree, Jackson and Bellows cross-endorsed each other, but it’s unclear how much that move resonated with voters, or whether it will work in boxing Shah out of a victory.
Predicting the outcome in ranked-choice runoffs is tricky, but a couple of recent studies attempted to do so. A ranked-choice simulation published last week by researchers at Cornell University, Yale University and Microsoft Research based on polling by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center predicted Shah will ultimately win. However, that polling deviated from the real results in first-choice outcomes, showing Shah and Jackson tied for first with the two having a larger lead over Bellows and Pingree.
A separate study from SurveyUSA, FairVote and the Bangor Daily News had Pingree winning last week, though an updated simulation the BDN ran Wednesday based on the survey and the actual first-round results showed Bellows winning in the end.
David Liu, an assistant research professor at Cornell who studies ranked-choice voting and worked on their study, said he was surprised to see Pingree finish as well as she did in first-place votes after the recent UNH poll had her in fourth with just 12% of first-choice votes.
A final round between Shah and Pingree could be competitive, he said Wednesday.
MIDGLEY OR BUSH LIKELY TO RISE IN GOP RACE — BUT WILL IT BE ENOUGH?
In the Republican primary, former fitness executive Ben Midgley and healthcare CEO Jonathan Bush are likely to be boosted in the runoff, but whether it will be enough for either of them to overtake front-runner Bobby Charles remains to be seen.
Charles had a sizable lead Wednesday, with 37.3% of the vote compared to Midgley’s 20.3% and Bush’s 20% in the seven-way race after 89% of votes were counted. (The race technically featured eight candidates, although one, state Sen. Jim Libby, R-Standish, dropped out in April but was still on the ballot. Libby’s votes were still counted because he didn’t formally withdraw.)
Charles’ campaign said in a statement Tuesday night that the “math is clear” and he is “fully expected to be the Republican nominee.”
But it’s unclear how many voters may have ranked Charles second on their ballots because his rivals mostly ganged up against him.
Libby and former Paris selectman Robert Wessels will be the first two candidates eliminated in this runoff, and both are Bush supporters. David Jones, a Falmouth real estate developer, will also be eliminated, and he endorsed Midgley as his second choice. Jones also encouraged voters to not rank Charles at all, criticizing the front-runner’s temperament and campaign tactics.
It seems most of the initial backup choices will be redistributed to Bush and Midgley. Which of those two candidates rises the most, and if it’s enough to overtake Charles, remains to be seen.
Liu, from Cornell, said polling data suggests there isn’t enough support for any one candidate to overtake Charles. In the UNH data, for example, Midgley voters were more likely to rank Charles second than Bush, he said.
That data also showed Midgley leading Bush 18% to 13% in terms of the most second-choice votes.
THREE CANDIDATES NEARLY TIED IN CD2
In the 2nd District, state Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, was in the lead Wednesday with 31.6% of the vote, but was trailed closely by former congressional staffer Jordan Wood (29.2%) and state Auditor Matt Dunlap (28.9%). Social worker Paige Loud (10.3%) conceded the race Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Loud said there’s no clear second-choice among her voters, and an informal poll revealed second-choice selections from Loud’s supporters were pretty evenly split among Baldacci, Wood and Dunlap. However, that survey was limited to about 150 people, the spokesperson said.
Even if Loud’s roughly 7,000 votes are all redistributed to one candidate, the race will need to go to a second round of ranked-choice voting. With the race so close among the other three, any of them could conceivably be eliminated in the second runoff.
The Cornell study found Baldacci most likely to come out as the overall leader, winning in 67% of simulations, and the SurveyUSA study also predicted Baldacci would come out on top.
