Today, hundreds of thousands of Mainers across the state will exercise their democratic right to choose leaders and vote on critical issues in local, county, state and federal elections.
Long a national leader in turnout, Maine is a closely watched state whose residents take voting seriously. And because of our professional municipal clerks, who collect and tally your votes in more than 500 cities and towns, voting in Maine is safe and secure, despite national efforts to undermine confidence in elections.
With big races for governor and the U.S. House of Representatives, the stakes are high, and we take our role seriously as messengers each Election Day. That’s why we deploy dozens of local reporters, freelancers, editors, support staff and developers to cover turnout, explain the voting process, and provide live returns and calls in every federal and statewide race.
There’s a lot that goes into covering an election in a state as large and rural as Maine. We have staff in the Bangor office entering results sent directly from clerks, and reporters on the ground from Caribou and Skowhegan to Buxton collecting returns in person and uploading them to our site.
This year we are once again partnering with Decision Desk HQ to call races for Congress, governor and the Legislature, which means you can count on us to tell you who has won as soon as we have enough data to accurately forecast winners.
Here’s how we’re covering this historic day, and how you can follow results in real time.
Stay glued to our website.
We’ll carry live returns starting after 8 p.m. at this link here, where you can watch the results for the big statewide races, track votes in a real-time map or drill down into county and local races, such as the city council race in Bangor, or the referendums in Portland and Bar Harbor.
Reporters and visual journalists around the state will also file continuously to our live blog, which will go up shortly after 5 p.m. on our homepage. That’s where you can get a glimpse into how the candidates are responding to the returns, see photos from around the state and get live analysis on the results as they come in.
Download our app and turn on notifications.
We’ll publish stories within seconds of getting calls in the two congressional races, the contest between Gov. Janet Mills and former Gov. Paul LePage, and the Legislature. Search for the Bangor Daily News in the App Store or Google Play, and turn on notifications to find out first who won.
Follow us on social media.
We’ll be posting noteworthy results and all race calls on Twitter as we get them. And at 8 p.m. on Facebook Live, you can follow BDN opinion editors Susan Young and Matt Junker for a discussion with columnists Ethan Strimling and Phil Harriman about their election predictions.
Later, they’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at election night forecasting with BDN politics editor Michael Shepherd. He’ll talk about early results and what towns are likely to be bellwethers for the state.
