Maine · Governor

Who is running?

Hannah Pingree (Democratic), Bobby Charles (Republican), Rick Bennett (Independent). The margin below is Hannah Pingree minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Maine elects a governor on November 3, 2026, to succeed Democrat Janet Mills, who is term-limited after being re-elected with 55.69% in 2022. The primaries used ranked-choice voting; the general election uses plurality voting. The text notes that no Republican has received 50% or more in a Maine gubernatorial election since 1962. The state's measured profile gives a median age of 44.8, a white non-Hispanic share of 0.9 and a college share of 0.4.

The Democratic nominee is Hannah Pingree, former Speaker of the Maine House and former director of the Governor's Office of Policy Innovation, who won after four rounds, beating Nirav Shah 56%–44% in the final round. The Republican nominee is Bobby Charles, a lawyer and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, who led the first round with 38.0% and won after seven rounds. Independent state senator Rick Bennett is also on the ballot.

All seven raters listed call the race D, among them the Cook Political Report (September 10, 2026), Decision Desk HQ (September 23, 2026) and Sabato's Crystal Ball (September 3, 2026). The text's polling average is Pingree 48.3%, Charles 37.3%, Bennett 4.9%. Recent polls include NYT/Portland Press Herald/Siena (September 15–22, 2026) with Pingree 47%, Charles 34%, Bennett 8%, and the University of New Hampshire (September 17–21, 2026) with Pingree 48%, Charles 40%, Bennett 5%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: facts.forecast carries no basis field, so the text cannot say whether the model's figures rest on polls or on a prior.; Fundraising figures are primary-period reports as of May 28, 2026; no general-election finance is given.; Raters' calls are given only as 'D', with no Lean/Likely/Safe grade.; The endorsement sections in the text are empty.

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 615e696cc32c; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 3.7 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.1 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between +0.7 and +19.4 points. Election day: -1.5 to +21.0. The election-day interval is 3.8 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 7.18 points, made of race-specific polling error 48%, drift to election day 31%, correlated polling error 12%, latent opinion 9%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

7 polls, most recent 2026-09-21. 43% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Hannah Pingree ahead of Bobby Charles. Over 15 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -1.2 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls.

Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run 5f1a675c-a40b-4793-a9e1-1981e4c2e03e and election-day run 1964eebb-c313-4aab-b103-6eb6e23c740a, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.