The ranked-choice vote count for the 2nd Congressional District is ongoing, albeit it at a somewhat slower pace that election officials originally hoped.

The tight race features apparent election night winner Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden and Republican challenger state Rep. Austin Theriault.

By mid-afternoon Thursday, the state and the campaigns had verified results from five of 11 counties in the 2nd District, prompting Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to say the count would need to continue on Friday.

“Based on my experience in 2022 when we did this in three and a half days, we’re going to need to have at least another half day,” she said.

Election night results showed Golden with 48.65% of the vote and state Theriault with 48.11%, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. That’s a difference of 2,159 votes out of more than 400,000 cast.

Because neither candidate earned 50% on election night, the state conducted a ranked-choice count to see if a write in candidate or the 12,635 blank votes would change the outcome.

Maine’s 2nd District, which President-elect Donald Trump won for the third consecutive time last week, is a GOP stronghold. But Golden has won the district every two years since 2018, when he defeated incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin to take the seat.

Golden declared victory last week, although the Associated Press did not call the race because of the close margin pending the ranked-choice count.

“I don’t think we’ve ever seen this before where your two leading candidates are so close, less than 1 percent difference between the two frontrunners,” Bellows said.

With the counties verified so far, Bellows said they are not seeing major discrepancies between the election night results and the ranked-choice count.

“There might be a one or two vote difference but there’s an explanation for every single one of those and the campaigns have signed off on those reconciliations,” she said.