On July 8, Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner suspended his campaign following allegations of sexual assault. The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to replace Platner, and the party plans to hold a 600-delegate convention to select its new nominee. Ranked choice voting (RCV) has become the norm in Maine since its first use in 2018, and Maine Democrats should consider using it in this process – to select a new Senate nominee with support from a majority of the party, and/or to select delegates to the convention. 

Additionally, among the names discussed as potential Platner replacements are three candidates from Maine’s record-turnout Democratic gubernatorial primary last month – public health official Nirav Shah, former State Senator Troy Jackson, and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Respectively, Shah, Jackson, and Bellows finished second, third, and fourth in that contest. The RCV data from that primary can provide insight on how voters feel about the candidates.

First, data from the state’s cast vote record – an anonymized record of every ballot cast – shows that most Maine Democrats have just affirmatively supported at least one of these candidates by ranking them on their ballots. 70% of Maine Democrats ranked Shah on their ballots, 73% ranked Bellows, and 62% ranked Jackson. More Maine Democrats ranked Shah (156,780) and Bellows (161,921) than voted for Platner (156,084).

Share of voters who ranked each candidate

Second, the cast vote record data available from an RCV contest provides more detailed information on voter behavior than we’d get in any “choose-one” election – including how the candidates would fare in head-to-head matchups, and how candidates appeal to different groups of voters. 

We can use ranking data to simulate head-to-head matchups – selecting any pair of candidates, and identifying who was ranked higher on the majority of ballots. In these head-to-head matchups, Shenna Bellows would defeat both Shah and Jackson, while Shah would defeat Jackson. 

How to read this chart: Read across rows. For example, read the top row as “Hannah Pingree is ranked higher than Nirav Shah on 56% of ballots, higher than Troy Jackson on 61% of ballots, higher than Shenna Bellows on 52% of ballots,” and so on.

There is also significant discussion of which possible Senate nominee might best reflect the coalition of voters who nominated Graham Platner in the primary – and whether picking that person should be a goal of Maine Democrats’ process. Notably, Platner supported Jackson, Bellows, and Hannah Pingree in the gubernatorial primary, with Jackson as his first choice. Those three candidates also cross-endorsed – encouraging voters to rank all three on their ballots. 

Cast vote record data shows the effect of the cross-endorsement was strongest between Pingree and Bellows – 57% of Pingree voters ranked Bellows in their top three, and 70% of Bellows voters ranked Pingree in their top three. Bellows and Pingree were also common backup choices for Jackson voters, but their supporters were less likely to rank Jackson highly. Pingree and Shah were common backup choices for each other’s supporters.  

Most common backup choices by candidate in the Democratic gubernatorial primary

Notably, ranked choice elections better position both winning and losing candidates for future campaigns. Bellows, Jackson, and Shah can all claim that they have just earned affirmative support from the majority of Maine Democrats in a record-turnout election. They all also emerged from the primary relatively unscathed – a benefit of ranked choice primaries that has been measured in previous research.

That’s because RCV allows candidates to highlight areas of common ground, instead of spending their time attacking one another. As noted above, Jackson and Bellows actually cross-endorsed each other and campaigned together. Shah recorded a video asking to be the second choice of voters ranking another candidate first. Several candidates complimented one another on the debate stage.

Dive into our full analysis of Maine’s cast vote record, or our reporting on the Maine primary results. To learn more about ranked choice voting in the Pine Tree State, visit Democracy Maine. 

FairVote is a nonpartisan election reform organization with no opinion on candidates for office. This analysis of what ranked choice voting data can tell us about possible replacements for Graham Platner is for informational purposes only.