Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, left, the Republican nominee for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, is seen during a September roundtable in Lewiston. State Auditor Matt Dunlap, right, the Democratic nominee for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, speaks at a campaign event in June in Bar Harbor. (Libby Kamrowski Kenny/Staff; Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press)

The tight race for Maine’s 2nd congressional district will head to a ranked-choice runoff after neither candidate secured more than 50% of the vote, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced Thursday.

But the process is unlikely to swing the election. Former Republican Gov. LePage, who holds a 5,400-vote lead with all municipalities reporting, is still a significant favorite to win the race. He declared victory at a news conference Wednesday — though the Associated Press has not yet called the race.

And on Thursday afternoon, shortly after Bellows’ announcement, Democratic State Auditor Matt Dunlap, LePage’s opponent, conceded the race.

“This isn’t the result we were hoping for, and I’m disappointed that we came short. Congratulations to Paul LePage, I wish him the best,” Dunlap said in a news release.

Regardless, the ranked-choice tabulation will begin Monday in Augusta with a confirmation of the accuracy of the cast votes. Then tabulators will then count second-choice votes from ballots that didn’t initially rank either LePage or Dunlap.

While the AP’s incomplete results show LePage with more than 50% of the tally, that doesn’t include the 6,014 blank ballots cast. The state determines the 50% threshold necessary to avoid a ranked-choice runoff using those blank ballots, too. LePage is just 316 votes short of the winning threshold.

The blank ballots include those who did not fill in any candidate bubble, as well as ballots with a write-in candidate who didn’t officially declare their candidacy. It’s unknown how many of these blank ballots fall into each category, nor is it known how many voters who wrote in a candidate chose LePage or Dunlap as their second choice.

Also in play are the 123 votes for the declared write-in candidate, Gregory A. Ward.

Any ballots that didn’t rank a first or second choice will be removed from the total votes cast in the ranked-choice runoff.

At the news conference in Bangor Wednesday, LePage claimed that there was no path to victory for Dunlap.

That analysis is likely accurate; with LePage just hundreds of votes short, he could cross the 50% threshold in the first round of tabulation.

LePage senior advisor Brent Littlefield backed up his team’s own vote-counting in a news release Thursday, saying it is “very clear… that Paul LePage is the Congressman-Elect.”

Ranked-choice tabulation was also used two years ago in this same district’s election. In 2024, the 2nd District race between incumbent Democratic Rep. Jared Golden and Republican Austin Theriault went to a runoff after 3% of voters did not select either candidate.

That runoff began a week after the election and finished three days later, with Golden declared the winner. A subsequent recount confirmed his win.

After first-round votes were counted, Golden had a 2,159-vote lead out of nearly 400,000 votes, with about 48.65% of the total ballots cast. Golden even contested the need for a recount, saying that he had secured the majority of first-choice votes — but Bellows maintained that blank ballots are counted toward the total.

LePage, though, is much closer to the 50% threshold than Golden was, and holds a larger lead over his opponent. It’s likely he will emerge as the eventual winner.

If the results bear out as his team expects, the former governor’s return to elected office is remarkable in the context of this election cycle: LePage would become the only Republican so far in this “blue wave” midterm to flip a Democratic-held U.S. House seat.

All of Maine’s other elections heavily favored Democrats, with Troy Jackson defeating Sen. Susan Collins and Hannah Pingree easily winning the governor’s race. But running up the margins in deep-red, rural areas, LePage pulled ahead in the vote count Wednesday.

If he were to win the runoff, the 78-year-old would be one of the oldest freshman congressmen in American history — a back-bencher with little individual lawmaking power in a heavily Democratic Congress.

LePage’s campaign has yet to make a statement about Bellows’ announcement, nor has Dunlap’s.

This is a developing story.