Jared Golden, a Marine Corps veteran and Democratic state lawmaker, defeated New England’s lone House Republican, Bruce Poliquin after the incumbent failed to win a majority of the vote and the state’s new ranked-choice voting system came into play. Mr. Golden received the majority of votes in the second round of vote tabulation, according to the Maine Secretary of State’s office. Read more

Maine is the first state in the nation to begin using ranked-choice voting: Instead of selecting just one candidate in a race, voters rank them in order of their preference, and those rankings are used to decide the contest if no candidate receives a majority at the outset. Look to the Second District, which covers the vast, sparsely populated majority of the state’s land area, as a barometer of how the state’s famously independent-minded voters are feeling about the state of the country. The district that gave President Trump his only electoral vote from New England in 2016.