Staff at the Maine Secretary of State’s Office double-check the voting record Friday before tabulating the ranked-choice vote at 45 Commerce Drive in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

AUGUSTA — After tallying the votes cast in every town in Maine’s sprawling 2nd Congressional District, election officials said Friday that U.S. Rep. Jared Golden won a narrow victory in his bid for a fourth term, with 50.35% of the votes.

The Lewiston Democrat will likely face a recount request from Republican challenger Austin Theriault of Fort Kent, but it’s rare for a recount to find mistakes serious enough to change the outcome of a race.

The three-term incumbent won office in 2018 when ranked-choice voting gave him the margin to unseat his GOP predecessor.

Golden and Theriault vied for the right to represent the largest district east of the Mississippi River in one of the most heated and expensive election campaigns in the nation. More than $50 million has poured into the rural district from partisans on both sides trying to claim the seat in a tightly divided U.S. House. Republicans were able to win enough races across the country to maintain control of the House by a narrow margin.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows talks to the laptop that broadcasts a live stream of ranked-choice vote tabulation at 45 Commerce Drive in Augusta on Friday. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

The initial round of counting by municipal officials in 11 Maine counties put Golden in the driver’s seat by a slim lead. But it fell short of the 50% needed to avoid adding ranked choice votes to the result.

The Maine Secretary of State’s office reviewed ballots and counts this week to figure out how ranked-choice votes affected the race. They said there were about 12,000 ballots that did not select Golden or Theriault as a first-round selection. Either they chose someone else first by writing a name, or they left the first choice blank.

On Friday, all of those roughly 12,000 ballots were run through a tabulator who quickly figured out how to redistribute the ballots to the second-place choices listed, which determined the winner.

In Maine, any congressional race whose final tally has less than a 1 percent difference between the winner and the loser is subject to a recount at no cost to the candidates. In a recount, each ballot is analyzed directly, officials said.

If that happens, which is likely, the recount will likely take several weeks and begin in early December.

This story will be updated.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows reads the results of the ranked election Friday at 45 Commerce Drive in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

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