AUGUSTA — If just 437 first-round ballots broke differently, tens of thousands of votes would have shifted in two of Maine’s Democratic primaries and radically changed the outcomes.
While former House Speaker Hannah Pingree won the gubernatorial nod by nearly 25,000 votes in a final round of voting against runner-up Nirav Shah, the fourth-place candidate was on the verge of winning in the early going, according to a Bangor Daily News analysis of complete ranked-choice ballots released this week by the secretary of state’s office.
The number of deciding votes was even smaller in the race for the party’s nomination in Maine’s 2nd District. It was won by State Auditor Matt Dunlap, but the third-place candidate came close to spoiling the race in favor of the eventual runner-up.
These races showed just how nuanced and volatile ranked-choice voting races can be. Relatively few votes early on can swing massive quantities in the later rounds. That’s exactly what happened to Maine Democrats this year.
This candidate had a real chance to go from fourth to first.
While Pingree ultimately had to fend off Shah, you could argue that her main rival in the race was Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Both were in a ranked-choice voting alliance with former Senate President Troy Jackson that was aimed at nudging Shah aside.
It did its job. Bellows was the most popular second choice in the field, narrowly edging out Pingree at 24.9% of votes. But she was in fourth place going into the count, sitting nearly 1,200 votes behind Jackson after the elimination of last-place candidate Angus King III. When King’s votes were reallocated, she narrowed the gap with Jackson to 547 but was eliminated.
If just 274 of Jackson’s voters had instead picked Bellows, she would have beaten him and eliminated Pingree next due to 43.5% of Jackson’s voters picking her second, making them the most correlated pair in the field. We spotted this theme in our pre-election poll of the race.
In the final round, Bellows would have beaten Shah by 3 points, meaning that a small number of King supporters effectively swung the election.
A first-time candidate almost played the unexpected spoiler.
Dunlap’s victory over state Sen. Joe Baldacci was decided by less than 3,400 votes in the final round, making it a close election no matter how you slice it. It’s a lot closer when you examine the first two eliminations in the race, headlined by third-place candidate Jordan Wood.
Wood, Dunlap and political newcomer Paige Loud were loosely aligned against Baldacci, who was a favorite of national Democrats in the race and led coming out of the first round. When Loud was eliminated, her votes broke for Wood and Dunlap. Wood remained 325 votes behind Dunlap and was eliminated.
If he had won just 163 of Dunlap’s voters, he would have gone on to a final round against Baldacci. Dunlap’s voters broke narrowly for Baldacci, who would have won by 517 votes in this scenario in part due to that and nearly 29% of Dunlap backers not picking another choice.
