Nobody knows who won Maine’s hotly contested and sometimes bitter 2nd District congressional race.

The two leading contenders — Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin and Democrat Jared Golden — are more or less tied.

Shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday, the Secretary of State’s Office reported unofficial first-round results that showed Poliquin with a razor thin 678-vote lead. Poliquin had 46.1 percent of the overall vote while Golden had 45.9 percent of the more than 250,000 votes cast in the race.

Poliquin’s campaign believes his lead is closer to 2,100 votes. It appears to include some towns the state count doesn’t have.

Until this year, that would have been enough to send Poliquin, 65, back to Capitol Hill to continue pushing for lower taxes, fewer regulations and more goodies for Maine.

With Maine’s new ranked-choice voting, however, that future is less clear.

Of the votes cast Tuesday across the sprawling district, about 1 in 12 landed in the column of either Tiffany Bond or Will Hoar, the often-overlooked independents in the four-way battle for Poliquin’s seat in the U.S. House.

The second- or third-place choices of those who voted for Hoar or Bond under the ranked-choice system will almost certainly decide whether Golden pulls off an upset or Poliquin remains in Washington.

Trying to figure out how those extra votes will go is impossible without running them through a tabulator and counting them up — which is exactly what Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap plans to do starting Friday and continuing through the weekend.

Until then, speculation is running rampant.

Poliquin and Golden are both trying to stay optimistic and patient.

“We are waiting on the results along with the citizens of the state of Maine,” Brent Littlefield, a Poliquin consultant, said Wednesday.

Golden seemed pretty happy on Election Night, but held back from claiming victory, content to see how the votes tally up.

But he’s not immune to thinking about the possibility he’ll wind up in Washington.

The other day, Golden said that if he comes out on top, he won’t follow Poliquin’s example of bedding down for the night in his office; Poliquin sleeps in his office, in a Murphy bed, during congressional sessions.

Instead, Golden said, he’ll find a little apartment somewhere like the one he had as a homeland security aide for Maine Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. Nothing fancy, he said, just a place to crash each night.

There are a few clues, though, that may help discern whether the Democrat’s dreams are likely to be dashed.

For one, an internal poll by Democrats found that Golden is three times more likely to be the second choice of independent voters than Poliquin. The poll has a big margin of error, but it may mean something.

Bond said she has no idea how her supporters voted.

Though both Hoar and Bond said they would pick Golden before Poliquin — who was the last choice of each of his three challengers — it’s not clear that the types of voters attracted to independents are inclined to take advice from any politician, even the one they voted for.

Former legislator John Nutting of Leeds said he’s confident Golden will triumph.

“He’ll get way over 90 percent” of the independents’ second-place support,” Nutting said, because Bond and Hoar are both more ideologically connected to the Democrats than they are to Poliquin.

Since ranked-choice voting has never decided the outcome of a congressional election before, it’s hard to say how it will play out. There is no history to rely on.

There is only the political science reality that every time an incumbent is on the ballot, the race is to some degree a referendum about that one person. Does he or she deserve re-election? Yes or no.

So somebody who votes for anybody other than Poliquin, insiders say, is more likely than not to pick the incumbent last in a ranked-choice scenario.

What everyone agrees on is that it comes down to numbers.

About 21,500 votes were cast for the two independents. If, for instance, two-thirds of those voters picked Golden second, Golden would receive about 14,000 of those votes to Poliquin’s 7,000, for an increase of about 7,000 votes for Golden — if every voter who chose Bond or Hoar first then picked someone beyond a first-place selection.

If Golden captures three in five of those same ballots, his total margin increases by about 5,000 votes over Poliquin, perhaps still enough to win but getting tighter.

Make it a 55-45 share of the independent ballots and Golden gains about 2,000 votes over Poliquin.

To put it another way, a few thousand independent voters going one way or another are going to decide who will represent Maine’s sprawling 2nd District for the next two years.

scollins@sunjournal.com

Get more up-to-date vote counts at https://stage.sunjournal.com/2018-election-map/ (Source: The Associated Press)

Rep. Bruce Poliquin greets supporters and speaks with the press at Dysart’s Travel Stop in Bangor on Tuesday, at what they hoped would be a re-election party. (Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel)

Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, seeking re-election in the 2nd Congressional District, greets supporters at his election-night party Tuesday in Bangor. (Gabor Degre/The Bangor Daily News via AP)