BANGOR – Democrat Mike Michaud appeared headed to victory over Republican Kevin Raye on Tuesday night in their closely watched race to become the 2nd District’s next congressman.

According to unofficial returns with 81 percent of precincts reporting, Michaud, the Maine Senate president pro tempore, had 52.6 percent of the vote to 47.4 percent for Raye, a former chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Michaud, of East Millinocket, and Raye, of Perry, had been locked in one of the tightest races in the nation to replace Bangor Democrat John Baldacci, whom returns indicate will be Maine’s next governor.

Michaud, 46, spent much of Election Day in the car – driving from his hometown of East Millinocket to Bangor to Lewiston and back to Medway – covering hundreds of miles in the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi River.

In Medway, Michaud stopped short of declaring victory before a crowd at the Disabled American Veterans hall, but acknowledged his growing lead, bolstered by substantial wins in paper mill towns as well as both Bangor and Lewiston – the district’s two largest cities.

“If the numbers hold it looks like the voters have sent a real worker to Washington,” said Michaud press secretary Monica Castellanos.

Earlier in the day, Michaud was buoyed by reports of heavy turnout in his hometown when arriving at Bangor’s Abraham Lincoln School.

“It’s going to be a close race, but we’re getting our voters out,” Michaud said before dashing into the east side school to do some television interviews. “We’re feeling pretty good about it.”

While Michaud was feeling good, elections officials in his hometown were feeling the Election Day crunch.

“We’re taking a ruler and poking [ballots] down in the box, but we haven’t had to empty them yet,” said East Millinocket Town Clerk Laura Ferguson, whose office also received 142 absentee ballots this year – at least triple the amount in any other election.

Despite the gap, Raye stopped short of conceding early Wednesday morning, instead opting to wait for unreported results from much of Hancock and Washington counties.

“It appears as though it’s going to be a long night, but we’re going to hold out and see what comes in in the next few hours,” Raye told the few dozen remaining supporters at a Bangor gathering shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday.

The outlook was brighter Tuesday afternoon in Bangor, when a chilled Raye, shifting from foot to foot and hands stuffed in his pockets, waited under a lamppost outside Bangor High School to greet incoming voters.

“You’ve got it!” shouted one man, giving an optimistic Raye, 41, the thumbs up sign before heading into the polling station, which like others in the city saw a steady turnout for a midterm election.

Earlier in the day at the same polling place, Dr. Steven Hintz cast his vote, although “with little enthusiasm,” he said, for Michaud, who bested five rivals in the party’s June primary.

“I think the Democrats made a mistake in nominating him,” said Hintz, 45, adding his vote was cast with the future makeup of Congress in mind. “While I don’t have a lot of problems with Raye’s positions, I’d like to at least weaken the Republican majority.”

Back at the Abraham Lincoln School, Melissa White also cast her vote for Michaud, but the registered Republican did so for different reasons.

“I just like his working class background as opposed to the guy who’s worked in Washington all the time,” said White, 36, after leaving the polls with her 3-year-old son, Joe. “I vote for someone I think is decent.”

But Michaud was not the only one getting votes from outside his party.

At the Bangor Civic Center, Democrat Amy Oliver, 26, voted for Raye, citing one of the most contentious issues in the race – that of abortion rights.

“I’m just a bit more optimistic about [Raye’s] politics,” said Oliver, who like several women interviewed Tuesday, cited the Republican’s “pro-choice” stance and Michaud’s “pro-life” voting record as deciding factors in their vote.

In polls leading up to Election Day, Raye had fared better among women, while Michaud had more support from men.

But it was Raye who won Paul Bussiere’s vote Tuesday, with the software technician from Bangor citing Maine’s projected $1 billion budget shortfall over the next biennium as more than enough reason to vote against Michaud, who has served in the Legislature for 22 years.

“It’s a mess,” said Bussiere, a 33-year-old Republican, of the state’s current budget woes – another prominent issue in the campaign. “And he’s part of the mess.”

Neither candidate – particularly Raye – appeared to benefit from the spate of negative advertising that has flooded the airwaves – and more recently the district’s mailboxes – in the past month.

Angela Mackie, a social worker from Bangor, said the three anti-Michaud mailers that landed in her mailbox this week actually prompted her to vote for the Democrat.

“I didn’t get anything anti-Raye,” she said, concluding Michaud ran the cleaner campaign.