In what was surely the most important ballot measure of the year, Question 5 in Maine — which would have changed the Maine state flag — has failed 55% to 45%, according to the AP. The campaign started as a simple vexillological debate between the current flag, which features the state seal on a blue background, and a version of the state's original flag, which had a star and pine tree on it. However, the ballot measure became a culture war issue as conservatives bristled at the "erasure" of the state seal, which features a farmer and sailor on it. That can be seen in a map of the results, in which liberal areas voted for the new flag and conservative ones voted against it.

ABC News reports that independent Sen. Angus King is projected to win reelection in Maine over his Republican opponent, Demi Kouzounas. With 95% of the expected vote reporting, King has 52% to Kouzounas's 34%, while Democrat David Costello has about 11%. Had King fallen below 50%, it would've sent the race to Maine's ranked-choice voting process, but he looks on course to finish with an outright majority and victory. Because King caucuses with the Democrats, this essentially counts as a Democratic hold.

As of this post, we have projections in 412 of the House's 435 seats. When we also add in two unprojected races in which the leading candidates are from the same party, that number grows to 414 (two Democrats are facing off in California's 34th District and two Republicans in Washington's 4th District). Among those seats, Republicans have a 212-to-202 seat edge, leaving the GOP needing six of the remaining 23 seats to secure the minimum 218 seats for a majority (they current control 221).

Looking at the 21 other seats, 10 of them are in California, which will not finish tallying its votes for some time to come. Out of those, four have Democratic incumbents in them who are, on balance, more likely than not going to win, as may Republican Rep. David Valadao (who is currently leading by 10 percentage points in California's 22nd District). So just to play out where things may be, let's add four to the Democratic total and one to the GOP and leave the other five California seats up in the air, which puts the math at 213-206 Republican. Democrats also have leads in Maine's 2nd District, Arizona's 4th District, Oregon's 5th District and Washington's 3rd District that look more likely than not to hold up. The same is true of Republicans' edges in Colorado's 3rd District and Arizona's 1st. If we assign those still-unprojected seats, that makes it 215-210 Republicans with 10 seats left.

As such, it seems like the range for Republicans is something like 216 to 223 and around 212 to 219 for Democrats, which means there is still a slim chance for Democrats to reach a majority. All told, then, the most likely outcome may be a ever-so-slightly smaller Republican majority than their current 221-to-214 advantage. Still a lot left to play out in those unprojected seats, though.

Late last night, the Maine secretary of state announced that no candidate for Maine's 2nd Congressional District had gotten a majority of first-place votes, so the race will be decided in an instant runoff next week. (Maine uses ranked-choice voting, whereby voters rank candidates in order of preference, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated and that candidate's votes go to whoever their voters ranked second on their ballots. This process repeats until one candidate gets a majority.)

The secretary of state also released final results for voters' first choices in the race: Democratic. Rep. Jared Golden got 196,189 first-place votes, Republican Austin Theriault got 194,030, write-in candidate Diana Merenda got 420, and 12,635 voters did not mark a first-place vote. Interestingly, that means Golden got a majority of first-place votes, but not a majority of all ballots cast — and that's enough to trigger the instant runoff (although Golden's campaign has formally lodged an objection to this). That's because, theoretically, someone could have left their first choice blank but voted for Golden or Theriault as their second choice, which might affect the final numbers. However, according to FairVote, only 6% of ballots that didn't mark a first choice in the 2022 race for this seat marked a second choice, and in 2018, it was only 9%. That suggests it's very unlikely that there are enough "hidden" second-place votes to vault Theriault ahead of Golden.