Ranked-choice tabulations are underway in Maine
Today, Maine election officials started running ranked-choice tabulations in the still-unresolved race for Maine's 2nd Congressional District. However, it could take days before they are finished and able to declare a winner. If you want, you can watch the process live here:
We already know that Democratic Rep. Jared Golden received 196,189 first-place votes, Republican state Rep. Austin Theriault received 194,030 first-place votes, write-in candidate Diane Merenda received 420 first-place votes, and 12,635 ballots left the first choice blank. But because Maine uses ranked-choice voting, votes for Merenda and blank votes will be redistributed to the candidate those ballots ranked second (or third, if someone used their first two slots for Merenda and a blank). Because of the gap separating Golden and Theriault, there would need to be thousands of "hidden" Theriault voters among those blank ballots in order for him to win, which is quite unlikely.