Interestingly enough, one or other of the two independent candidates emerged as the second choice of all voters who indicated a valid second preference, irrespective of their first preference choice. A plurality of Poliquin and Bond first preference voters chose Hoar, while a majority of voters selecting Golden or Hoar as their first preference went for Bond, who obtained the largest overall second preference total. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that the second preferences of Poliquin and Golden voters had no bearing on the election outcome, which was determined by the elimination of independent candidates Bond and Hoar after the first preference count, and the addition of their second preferences to the first preference votes cast for continuing candidates Golden and Poliquin, including 6,615 of the 8,260 ballots with first and second preferences for the two independents plus valid third preferences for Golden or Poliquin.

An overwhelming majority of voters indicating valid preferences for at least two different candidates - 136,895 out of 140,325, or 97.6% - cast valid first and second rankings. Of the remaining 3,430 ballots, a total of 2,604 had valid first rankings, an undervote (that is, blank) second ranking, and a valid third ranking for another candidate. Following Maine's RCV counting rules, single skipped rankings were ignored, and the third ranking was counted as the second preference; the same logic was applied to 259 ballots with an undervote on the first ranking, but valid preferences for different candidates in the second and third rankings (which were counted as first and second preferences).

The statistics presented here were obtained from CSV-format data available in State of Maine 2018 Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) Election Data, which has additional information and links pertaining to the election.