Former Maine Governor Paul LePage has been officially confirmed as the winner of the state’s 2nd Congressional District race after the Maine Secretary of State’s Office completed ranked-choice voting tabulation of the November 3 general election.
According to the official tabulation results released by the Elections Division, LePage received 170,890 votes, or 50.81 percent, while Democratic State Auditor Matthew Dunlap received 165,432 votes, or 49.18 percent. The figures are based on a total of roughly 341,500 ballots cast in the race.
On election night, first-choice totals showed LePage with 170,263 votes and Dunlap with 164,845 votes . Declared write-in candidates accounted for 123 votes, or 0.036 percent, and 6,017 ballots (1.763 percent) were left blank. Because no candidate reached a majority of all ballots cast, state law required the ranked-choice process, which reallocates votes from blank ballots and lower-ranked candidates until one candidate exceeds 50 percent.
Once blank ballots were set aside, LePage already held a majority of remaining first-choice votes. The subsequent reallocation of second-choice rankings from write-in ballots produced only a modest net gain for him, widening his final margin to just under 5,500 votes. The Associated Press formally called the race for LePage on Thursday after the tabulation concluded.
Both candidates had treated the outcome as settled a week earlier, as LePage declared victory on November 4. Dunlap then conceded the following day, stating that the first-round lead was insurmountable.
POLL: Will America Regret Giving The Democrats Power?
BREAKING: It’s official.
Paul LePage is your next congressman for CD-2.
Final results after the RCV tabulation:
LePage: 170,890 – 50.81%
Dunlap: 165,432 – 49.18% pic.twitter.com/lrabNhiser— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) November 12, 2026
LePage, 78, served as Maine’s governor from 2011 to 2019. A Lewiston native, he has long described himself as “Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular.” After term limits ended his governorship, he returned from Florida in 2022 to run for a third term but lost to Democratic Governor Janet Mills.
In his current role, he will succeed four-term Democrat Rep. Jared Golden, who announced in late 2025 that he would not seek re-election, citing personal and political reasons. Golden had held the seat since 2019 by running as a moderate willing to break with national Democrats.
Maine’s 2nd District covers more than 27,000 square miles of mostly rural northern and western Maine and is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi River. In the 2024 presidential election, President Donald Trump carried the district with 53.5 percent of the vote to Kamala Harris’s 44.5 percent, while Golden narrowly won re-election under the state’s ranked-choice voting system.
The district has awarded its single electoral vote to the Republican presidential nominee in each of the last three elections.
LePage’s victory is the only House seat that changed from Democratic to Republican control in the 2026 midterm elections without assistance from redistricting. Other Republican pickups, including seats in Texas and Tennessee, resulted from new maps drawn in the intervening cycle that altered district boundaries and voter composition.
