Who is ahead in the 2026 Maine's 1st District race?

Name: U.S. House - ME-01, Maine, Vugol Vector & Vugol Attention
Creator: Vugol Me
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Chellie Pingree (D) won the ME-01 race. Pingree leads Russell by 23.9 points in our average of verified polls. Verified poll average · 1 poll · newest poll ended 2026-09-21. Updated 2026-11-15.

Home / Races / Maine / U.S. House - ME-01

ME2026

U.S. House - ME-01 · Maine · 2026

General election · 2 on the November ballot · Incumbent running

VecD 89 · AnchoredTenD >99%Att30

TV graphic Vugol race poll

Result

Called

Chellie Pingree (D) won this race.

Chellie PingreeDemocraticIncumbentWinnerno count in the source

Also on the ballot, no count in the source: Ronald Russell (R).

Called: Called by Wikipedia editors, Nov 4, 6:40 AM ET (revision)
Last updated: Nov 7, 8:53 AM ET
Source: Wikipedia (House results table) · official results page

Called it: hit Our locked call before polls closed was D; the winner is D. See every locked call

Unofficial until the state certifies the result.

Before the election

Polls, ratings and the Vugol Tensor below were published before votes were counted. They are not results.

Race poll averageU.S. House - ME-01 · Maine

Chellie M Pingree

DIncumbent

62%

Ronald Charles Russell

38%

Verified poll average · 1 poll · newest poll ended 2026-09-21

D · Anchoredfrom verified polls

Verified polls Pingree leads Russell by 23.9 points in our average of verified polls.

1 verified poll averaged, newest ended 2026-09-21. Page updated 2026-11-15. Sources · What is validated

ExperimentalNews attention 30/100, how much coverage the race gets, not who is winning. Updated 3 days ago. How it works

On the Maine ballot, Nov 3, 2026 Representative in Congress, District 1, 2 names on the official list. Election Day has passed; see the ballot as it was.Voting in Maine? Check your registration, get a mail ballot, find your polling place.

On the November ballot (2)

From reported primary results, checked 2026-11-14. Each state certifies its own ballot; see the source below.

Chellie M PingreeU.S. House - ME-01 · FEC H8ME01120Democratic IncumbentOn the ballotFEC raised$551K Ronald Charles RussellU.S. House - ME-01 · FEC H4ME01160RepublicanOn the ballotFEC raised$214K

Ran in the primary (1)

Lost a primary or runoff for this seat, not on the November ballot.

Joshua James PietrowiczU.S. House - ME-01 · FEC H6ME01298RepublicanLost primaryFEC raised$14K

Other filers (2)

Registered with the FEC or listed in public records, but not on the November ballot as far as the results show.

Eric SmallU.S. House - ME-01 · FEC H6ME01272RepublicanNot on the November ballotFEC raised$13K Tiffany Danielle RobertsU.S. House - ME-01 · FEC H6ME01280DemocraticNot on the November ballotFEC raised$20K

Ballot source: https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/maine-primary-results-us-house/#1

Polling average · 1 verified pollVerified

Pingree +24

Chellie M Pingree Democratic: Incumbent62%
Ronald Charles Russell Republican: 38%

Latest verified field polling

Verified = published by the pollster that conducted it, with a public source we link to.

1 verified poll

Latest verified pollVerified

Pingree +22

Chellie M Pingree Democratic: 57%
Ronald Charles Russell Republican: 35%

Cite / verify

Cite thishttps://vugol.me/races/US-ME-01

Sourcehttps://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2006&context=survey_center_polls

Retrieved2026-11-15

Polling average Updates as polls arrive

1 verified input

62.0% Chellie M Pingree38.0% Ronald Charles Russell

Chellie Pingree (D)Ronald Russell (R)● verified poll · ○ quarantined poll · ◎ live average

Vugol Tensor

How far this poll average can miss · a range, not a prediction

tensor-1.0.0

Centre D+23.9. Four times in five the result lands between D+30.6 and D+17.2; nine in ten between D+32.5 and D+15.3. Chance the Democrat finishes ahead: >99%.

Same inputs as the Vugol Tensor page: the verified polling average above (1 verified poll), plus how far polls have missed since 1998. In the backtest the plain poll average picked the wrong winner in about 11% of polled, mostly competitive races (11.2%, 946 races, 1998 to 2024), and polls miss together. Not a forecast guarantee. How Tensor works →

Campaign money (FEC)

Candidate committee totals for the cycle from the Federal Election Commission (public domain), as of each committee's latest report.

Candidate	Raised	Spent	Cash on hand	Through
Chellie M Pingree Democratic	$551,078	$646,707	$320,049	2026-10-14
Eric Small Republican	$12,514	$12,514	$0	2026-03-10
Joshua James Pietrowicz Republican	$13,585	$13,582	$3	2026-09-30
Ronald Charles Russell Republican	$214,096	$219,953	$8,364	2026-10-14
Tiffany Danielle Roberts Democratic	$20,051	$15,158	$4,893	2026-09-30

Ad spending (FEC)

What each campaign reported paying for ads, and what outside groups (super PACs, PACs and parties) reported spending for and against each candidate. Federal Election Commission filings, public domain.

Candidate	Campaign's own ads	Outside groups for	Outside groups against
Ronald Charles Russell Republican	$8,394+ $1,769 mail · through 2026-06-30	none reported	none reported
Tiffany Danielle Roberts Democratic	$1,720+ $262 mail · through 2026-06-30	none reported	none reported
Chellie M Pingree Democratic	$800+ $4,120 mail · through 2026-09-30	none reported	none reported
Eric Small Republican	$250through 2025-12-31	none reported	none reported
Joshua James Pietrowicz Republican	$55through 2026-06-30	none reported	none reported

Outside groups: 24- and 48-hour independent expenditure reports for the 2026 primary and general, each expenditure counted once after amendments; "ads" is TV, radio, digital and other media, and the rest is mail, phones, canvassing and similar. Campaign's own ads: TV, radio, digital, other media and ad production in the campaign committee's itemized payments, as the campaign described them, from the reports the FEC has processed (latest through 2026-09-30); newer reports appear as the FEC processes them. These are amounts committees reported paying, not airtime tracked by ad-monitoring firms, so very recent buys and future reservations may not show yet. Parser fec-ad-spend-1.0.0.

Results

Vote counts as reported by the state; transcribed from the Wikipedia election article (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites the state’s official results.

Democratic primary

Chellie Pingree (incumbent) won	128,257	100.0%

Republican primary · official results

Ronald Russell won	27,059	53.5%
Joshua Pietrowicz	23,485	46.5%

Source: Wikipedia article revision (CC BY-SA 4.0), retrieved 2026-11-14 · parser wiki-race-1.0.0

Key dates

Official federal election dates for this state from the FEC. Registration deadlines and early voting: see the state election office.

2026-06-09, Primary election: U.S. House
2026-11-03, General election: U.S. House

Source: FEC election dates (public domain).

Primary and hypothetical polls (1)

Kept on file, never averaged into this race. Polls listed on the Wikipedia election article (CC BY-SA 4.0), each linked to that article revision and, where we know it, to the pollster's own site.

Republican primary · University of New Hampshire · 2026-05-21–2026-05-25 · n=209 · Ronald Russell (R) 24%,Joshua Pietrowicz (R) 7% · pollster's site · release

In the news

New critique of offshore wind clawbacks: Taxpayers lose outRoll Call · Sep 30

Headlines from outlets across the political spectrum, linked to the publisher. Vugol.me doesn’t write or endorse them. How we choose them · All election news

Lab

Vugol Vector & Vugol Attention

Vugol Attention 30 Vugol Vector D · Anchored

Vugol Me model signals, not polls. Verified polling is in the Polls section above.

Vugol Me Attention (attention intensity)

Vugol Attention intensity index 0–100 · not a poll · normalized nightly

attention-1.0.0

30OUT OF 100Low attention

Vugol Attention percentile39th

7-day momentum2 / 100

Source breadth50% of tracked

Vugol Vector

Proprietary ensemble model · a call, not a probability · model confidence: medium

vector-1.1.0

Democratic leanOpen centerRepublican lean

AnchoredHeldTiltingOpenTiltingHeldAnchored

Completeness4 of 7 inputs (national, prior, incumbent, money) · missing: pres, pulse, poll

Evidenceno audit release · fundamentals only

Freshnessoldest input 2026-11-12 (3 days ago)

The breakdown of this call (the model's multi-signal input matrix, input by input) is on Ultra Pro plans.

Desk data: daily telemetry

Per-source daily series, CSV export and the Vugol Vector breakdown · paid plans

Sources

Roster, official filings; fundraising from FEC datapoints where on file (https://api.open.fec.gov/).
Vugol Attention inputs, Wikipedia pageviews (https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/) and GDELT news volume and tone (https://www.gdeltproject.org/).
Polls and results, individual polls and primary results listed on the Wikipedia election article (CC BY-SA 4.0), each poll linked to the pollster's release; money and election dates from the FEC (public domain). How rows are checked.
Models attention-1.0.0 · vector-1.1.0 · attention inputs SHA-256 f18b3da09c67 · methodology · license CC BY 4.0 (data license).

Vugol Vector band: D · Anchored. Have a say in the Vugol race poll; it is open to signed-in voters and never feeds these numbers.

The four Vugol signals, side by side

They answer different questions and are kept apart. Full method: Methodology.

Vugol Vector: Our call for every race if today’s polls hold. A snapshot, not a win probability or a vote share.
Vugol Tensor: How sure we are: ranges and chamber-control odds around the Vector, built from past polling error. An experiment about uncertainty, not a better guess.
Vugol Attention: How much news and online noise a race gets, 0 to 100. It measures noise, not support: a high score says nothing about who is ahead.
Vugol Pulse: Our daily thumbs-up or thumbs-down question for readers. Anyone can answer, so it describes our readers, not the public. It is not a vote and never enters a poll average or any other signal.