AARP poll: Dunleavy could get landslide victory, Tshibaka-Murkowski at dead-even, and Peltola is leading Palin

By
Suzanne Downing
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77
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AARP released polling numbers on Thursday that show Gov. Mike Dunleavy performing well with older voters, approaching landslide territory in the ranked-choice general election.

According to the results of the poll, Dunleavy could end up with 59% of the final-round vote count. But he also has a chance of winning the race outright, without going through the ranked choice process. The poll shows him at 49% of the expected vote, and he would need 50+1 to win outright in the first round.

U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka also looks good in the AARP poll. According to the polling, she and Sen. Lisa Murkowski end up in a tie at the third round of counting. Murkowski will inherit 77% of Pat Chesbro’s votes, and Tshibaka will inherit 29% of Buzz Kelley’s votes, with most Buzz Kelley voters not ranking anyone else.

The AARP results mirror the internal polling of the Tshibaka campaign, conducted by Cygnal.

In the congressional race, the AARP poll shows that Democrat Mary Peltola has the advantage in the final round of counting, reaching 53% of the final tally, with Sarah Palin at 47%, if Chris Bye and Nick Begich are eliminated.

AARP commissioned the bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward & Impact Research. The polling companies interviewed 1,050 likely Alaska voters, including a statewide representative sample of 500 likely voters, with an oversample of 550 likely voters age 50 and older between September 6-11, 2022. The interviews were conducted via landline (30%), cellphone (35%), and SMS-to-web (35%). The margin of sampling error for the 500 statewide sample is ±4.4%; for the 840 total sample of voters 50+ is ±3.3.

The polling results can be seen here:

aarp-alaska-2022-elections-voter-survey.doi_.10.26419-2Fres.00550.009Download

77 COMMENTS

  2. Kinda surprised to see Gara ahead of Walker, actually. Dunleavy is a RINO, but at least he’s better than those two.

    I would have thought Tshibaka had no chance, so that poll is promising.

    Sarah is just a bad candidate – we’re looking at the same result we had with the special election. I moved up here in ’21 so I don’t really know the history with Palin, but it doesn’t matter if she’s unelectable – DROP OUT SARAH.

    • Kelly has the fearful older folks segment all sewn-up. Unfortunately they are her only a segment of the voting population.

      • What a demeaning comment to seniors who have worked all their lives, paid taxes, and contributed to the well being of Alaskans! Shame on you!

        • Fun when you say it from behind an annoymous moniker, huh?

          I see you, too, are a fearful older person. As Sassy Senior, you don’t use your real name here because?

        • I’m a senior. Worked all my life, paid taxes (though not allowed to in myown state and city), and contributed.

          And use my real name here. I see you did not.

          Are fearful to use your real name.

          • Fearful to use my real name? Not necessarily. I don’t have to. My late husband succumbed to Stage 4 cancer after a year of treatments, and I don’t owe you an explanation. I do wish you well in your difficult journey. “Fearful seniors,” perhaps like me, tend to vote with our wallets when confronted with the realities of widowhood and survival. We don’t need the insults.

          • Several variations of the “wood chipper” cartoon came about during the past decade when some politicians were debating means to reduce the costs of Social Security, Medicare, etc. It was indeed crass. Had I been aware of your circumstances, I would not have included that reference in my comment.

      • As opposed, I suppose, Maureen, to the terrified (and terrorized) Covidian cohort, who allowed themselves to be injected with an experimental, unsafe and ineffective non-vaccine out of sheer terror instilled in them by corporate media and governmental propaganda. But that was not being “fearful”, eh?

        • No,and I’m not fearful in the face of my ovarian cancer stage IV. I do follow science regarding medicine.

          A million people died. Hundreds of thousands of children lost a parent. The economy crashed. It wasn’t government propaganda.

        • Not fearful of covid, or the ovarian cancer sage IV that I have luckily survived these past 5 years, with a huge amount of chemo and other medicines. Tested and approved by the US government.

      • I’m 40 and I am voting Kelly 1st choice. Lisa lied running against Joe and then used the power of her family name to change the write-in process requirements. Kelly could go RINO too once she’s in, but at least Lisa will be done.

  3. Yawn! AARP is a Democratic standby with over 90% of its campaign contributions going to Democratic candidates or policy positions. Their polls usually reflect this. I guess giving Dunleavy the nod was only because Walker & Gara are so obviously unelectable. What I wanna know is where the hell is the Alaska Division of Elections data on Mary Peltola’s ranked choice voting data? It is almost a month now since the election. The other candidates’ data has been released, why not Peltola’s? This is beginning to smell worse than a ton of cod left in the fish hold for a month!

    • Fishing for Food,
      The information is already ‘released’. You can download it at this web address:
      https://www.elections.alaska.gov/election-results/e/?id=22sspg
      See: “Cast Vote Record”

      The file is 375MB of raw text. It represents every individual scanned ballot. Government possesses the software to easily tabulate and release ‘2nd rankings’ – but they won’t – because ultimately election transparency isn’t a desired outcome. How is that for a black pill?

      I haven’t really done much programming since the 80’s. I’m just a stupid civil engineer. Teasing out the information requires writing a batch file that can find (and count) specific ‘strings’ in that massive text file. The ‘professional’ press won’t do this for you, of course, because real journalism is dead.

      I’m pretty sure Suzanne HAS done this – but won’t release the information. Probably because “Peltola voters preferred Begich by huge margin!” makes for a bad headline when you are trying to snooker conservative voters into the Begich camp.

      If anyone is curious and wants to nerd out on that file:
      “ContestID”:61 is the code for the Special General election.
      (Take everything here with a grain of salt, I’ve had a long work day.)

      Each unique ballot ‘mark’ is listed in the following format:
      “Candidate; ManifestationID; PartyID; Rank; MarkDensity; IsAmbiguous; IsVote”
      with an additional string for each candidate ranked on the ballot.

      “CandidateID”:218 is Mary Peltola.
      “CandidateID”:217 is Sarah Palin.
      “CandidateID”:215 is Nick Begich.
      “CandidateID”:214 is a write in.

      Not sure what “ManifestationID” is exactly.
      PartyID: (of candidate) 6 = Democrat, 14 = Republican
      Rank (1,2,3 or 4) is how that candidate was ranked.
      MarkDensity is likely how well the voter ‘filled in the bubble’ on the ballot.
      IsAmbiguous; true/false based on ballot marking criteria – probably ‘MarkDensity’.
      IsVote; true/false – whether this vote was counted in any given round of the ranked process.

      Want to know how many people ranked Palin 2nd? Here is the money shot!

      Figure out how many times the following string occurs in that file: (XXXX represents any number)
      “CandidateId”:217,”ManifestationId”:XXXX,”PartyId”:14,”Rank”:2,

      That is the total number of ballots that had Palin marked #2. (With luck, some database nerd can figure this out, or I’ll stop being lazy and do it myself.)

      Anyway – take that number, and SUBTRACT the number of known Begich voters that ranked Palin 2nd. (That number is 27,053). The result? You should be pretty close to the total Peltola voters that ranked Palin 2nd.

      MRAK gets BTFO when we learn how Democrats predictably prefer moderate Begich to rightwing Palin.

      • Apu – I tried to download the Cast Vote Record on the Divion of Elections website but it would not allow me to. Apparently, it is a Dominion JSON file and either not available for download to the public or, more likely, intentionally made much more difficult for the average citizen to obtain. I am surprised that MRAK hasn’t provided the data as they were more than happy to supply Palin’s & Begich’s data. There must be something in there that is damaging to the Begich campaign. This is election meddling!

    • The data was released a while ago:

      ● Begich preferred over Peltola by 52% of voters
      ● Begich preferred over Palin by 61% of voters
      ● Peltola preferred over Palin by 51% of voters

      Begich was the true preference of the voters, and would have won if Palin had dropped out. Palin acted as a spoiler. (Yes, Hare RCV still suffers from the spoiler effect, despite all the propaganda that says otherwise. It is not safe to vote honestly under Hare RCV, and not safe for two candidates from the same party to run in the same election.)

      With a good voting system like Condorcet RCV or STAR Voting, Begich would have won.

      With broken voting systems like FPTP or Hare RCV, the two Republicans split the vote and a Democrat will win. For a Republican to win in November, either Palin needs to drop out or the RCV ballots need to be counted with a more democratic voting method.

      • What we are looking for, that hasn’t been officially released (to my knowledge), are the 2nd ranked choice of the Palin voters and the Peltola voters. We are interested in – had Palin or Peltola been eliminated in the 1st round (as Begich actually was) – how would their votes have been distributed?

        All we ‘really’ know is how Begich’s voters 2nd ranked – because he was eliminated in the 1st round (smallest number of votes) – and the government published the information.

        The reason for being interested in this information – is that it gives insight into what type of voter supports each candidate. Peltola voters are generally left Democrats. Had she been eliminated, where do they throw their support? Answer – whoever they perceive to be most in line with their political preference of the remaining two candidates. Is this Begich or Palin?
        If Peltola Democrats overwhelmingly 2nd Ranked Begich, it means thousands of voters saw Begich as the most left leaning of the two remaining candidates.

        If Palin had been eliminated in the first round, how did Palin voters 2nd rank? According to MRAKs unofficial analysis of the raw data file, Palin voters were significantly more likely than Begich voters to hold their nose and ‘Rank the Red’. Palin voters were less likely to spoil their ballot. And, most importantly, they were FAR less likely to defect and vote Democrat.

        This data can give some useful insight how voters perceive these candidates, but ‘officially’ we only get an official tabulation of how Begich voters 2nd ranked. We should know how ALL candidates were 2nd ranked. But these numbers are concealed from the public – unless you are able to decipher the very large JSON text file without their proprietary tabulation software. Make sense now?

      • Guest – you can’t get away with just pulling numbers out of your butt! The ADN has that market covered.

  4. Begich voters need to rank Palin second; Palin voters need to rank Begich second. Problem solved. Begich and Palin need to get the word out to their supporters.

    There is NO excuse for conservative voters not to rank all Republican candidates. Save me the BS arguments as I’ve heard them all. For the good of the Nation, do the right thing.

    • When Sarah was on Bannon’s War Room after Peltola won, she told her supporters to just vote like they always have, i.e., only vote for her.

      I can’t believe I ever supported her, but I am still ranking her after Begich.

    • Not happening. I voted Trump twice, went to his rally (where I had to listen to screechy)
      My picks are Dunleavy, Tshibaka, Begich (w/ Bye 2nd & Peltola 3rd)
      I have NEVER voted for daddy’s girl, because of the nepotism & what she did to Joe Miller
      We don’t have to vote for the liberal cheerleader from Wasilla to SAVE the nation
      That’s BS. It’s a 2 year gig & then we can vote Peltola out.
      We voted Mark Begich out. It’s not the end of the world.

    • The people ranking Begich first and Peltola second are not conservatives, obviously. If you want them to rank Palin second, convince them she’s a good candidate.

  5. But she has always been ahead of Nick, and she would have beat Peltola if not for Nick’s BLUE RINO’S. RANK THE RED.

  6. What has not happened yet is the Peltola- Biden Democrat has not had her record exposed. Once that happens (and it needs to happen) voters- particularly the independents- will drop her like the socialist hot potato that she is.

    Peltola stands with the demented, corrupt, mean, incompetent Biden. She/he wants open borders, bans on semi-automatic rifles, more IRS agents, more taxes, less energy independence, more debt, more destruction of the US economy.

    Voters in Alaska are not going to go state- wide for a socialist Democrat who wants to ban their guns.

    • Peltola has well over 100 guns in her house.
      People in Bethel hunt. She has lots of sons.
      Her husband is a trophy hunter. He went on a sheep hunt in Spain recently
      It’s good that you are a conservative & want a red candidate, but lying about the opposition doesn’t help

    • You are all forgetting the Dominion voting machines. They simply cannot be trusted to produce honest voting results. It appears the Dominion machines gave the Begich second vote to Petola. It is an insult to belive 15,000 Begich voters listed Petola second. This all resulted in stealing the election from Sarah Palin.

      Does anyone really believe the general election vote results will be different with the Dominion machines controlling the final vote totals.

      • Tommy, get a grip. You are so old school. Sarah Palin is not an answer to your prayers, buddy. You need a good dose of reality. Try showering off all of that Palin love potion that drips from your body. She’s severely flawed and Alaskans know it. She’s NOT a leader. Wake up! If Palin stays in, Peltola wins again. Go talk to your fairy princess and tell her if she really is religious and concerned for Alaska’s future she will drop out. Otherwise, old fools like you will go to your graves with your kids wiping off the fairy dust you leave behind.

      • It doesn’t matter if Peltola’s pro gun! As a freshman (woman) Democrat the pressure will be intense for her to toe the Democrat’s anti gun agenda, or else. Remember when Diane Feinstein had Murkowski cowering against the wall during the Kavanaugh hearings? Murkowski was ostensibly a Republican & she still had to cave to the pressure. If the Party needs Comrade Peltola’s vote to enact gun legislation they will most assuredly get it!

  7. Dunleavy will likely win since Walker did not drop out.,
    Dunleavy needs to make good on Cares Act money meant for small business through the dept. of labor and those small business’s that did receive some money were told they have to pay it back., then state employees got a big raise, shame.

  8. How could such a weak kneed governor garner such support? He basically sold out everyday Alaskans when he said nothing about the Anchorage Assembly’s nazi-like behavior and when he allowed his COVID czar to run roughshod over us. Not to mention him allowing the health department to champion trans and homosexuality. He is not who he billed himself to be. He is a poser and a huckster.

  9. Sarah Palin is finding out…even a Democrat is better than she is to Alaskans. She is poised to lose to Peltola as badly as Alyse lost to Don Young

  10. The poll shows Palin with favorability of 38% which is strongly higher than the 31% in the highly accurate Dittman poll. I highly doubt she’s leading Begich by 10 at this point especially cause she only beat Begich by 2.7 in the first round the last time.

  14. Voting is now a computer scam. They’ve stolen the country and now the state without a whimper much less a shot fired.

  15. Another “poll” was held three weeks earlier — on Aug 16 when real voters cast real votes. In that poll, Lisa Murkowski led Kelly Tshibaka 45%-39%. Could voter attitudes have changed enough to reverse the outcome to 46%-38% in favor of Tshibaka?

    • Lee M. – Thanks for the question. The AARP poll skews to the older voter, as they explain at the bottom of the story. That may have something to do with it. Older voters are often more conservative. – sd

      • Thanks, Suzanne, for the addendum. I missed seeing it but it answers the question. Where the story says “results mirror the internal polling of the Tshibaka campaign,” was the campaign also polling voters 50 and over? If not, would “mirror” be an accurate comparison?

        • Lee – I have the summary of the Cygnal poll. Here’s what it says: METHODOLOGY: The survey was conducted among 504 likely general election voters in Alaska on August 20-22, 2022 and has a margin of error of ±4.32%. Known registered voters were interviewed via live phone calls, SMS-to-web and
          email-to-web. The survey sample was weighted to reflect a representative sample of the likely 2022 general electorate in
          Alaska.

          • Thanks, Suzanne. The methodologies of the Cygnal and AARP polls appear to be identical — except that Cygnal reflects “a representative sample of the likely 2022 general electorate,” while AARP oversamples “likely voters age 50 and over.” That would suggest the two polling results do not “mirror” each other. And with the campaign’s internal poll taken barely a week after the “real poll” on Aug. 16, the larger question is still — Could voter preferences have shifted that significantly?

      • AARP is a self-serving, maximizing profits rip-off. They care more about getting our money, and less how they can best serve us seniors. Their “poll” don’t mean nothing. Ignore it.

      • Suzanne, Winston Churchill once noted, ” if you are not liberal at 20, you have no heart. However if you are not conservative at 40, you have no brain”

  16. I am on the verge of not voting for governor this go around!! We’re told gara and walker are horrible! I can’t argue! I simply can’t stomach dunleavy! Literally there is blood on his hands!
    Literally he stood and watched communist takeover a city! Literally he is totally undependable when the state needs a leader!
    Literally he promotes the kill shot, even to children! Literally he’s allowed his own division of elections to screw the state multiple times!
    What the hell are the benefits of having him!?
    Two bit good for nothing!

  19. Well the way I see it, the question should be:

    WHO has the most education/experience with a Senate?

    I don’t recall Palin or Begich being there.

    Mary has been thru the Basic Training.

    Now she is in Special Operations in DC.

    After the DRAMA in Juneau she will be fine in DC.

  20. Apu – I tried to download the Cast Vote Record on the Divion of Elections website but it would not allow me to. Apparently, it is a Dominion JSON file and either not available for download to the public or, more likely, intentionally made much more difficult for the average citizen to obtain. I am surprised that MRAK hasn’t provided the data as they were more than happy to supply Palin’s & Begich’s data. There must be something in there that is damaging to the Begich campaign. This is election meddling!

    • Fishing for Food, I don’t do JSON either, but it looks like 65% of Peltola voters gave Nick their second vote. 60% of Palin voters voted for Nick in second place. In a head to head, Nick Begich beats Mary by 5 points and in a head to head Nick beats Palin by 23 points.

  22. Suzanne – so 65% of Peltola voters, whom I assume are Democrats, ranked Begich second? It appears that I was right when I stated earlier that the Dems played their hand brilliantly! They now have two contenders in the November election – Begich, a left leaning RINO who will almost certainly play along to get along with the Dems & Peltola a certain yes vote for Pelosi’s anti-American agenda. It is win/win for them. Once again the Repubs have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. We need a new political party in Alaska & the rest of the USA. The RINO infested Republican Party of today has become too corrupt and comfortable with the globalist agenda.

    • Palin didn’t get to where she was without those Begich 27,000+ second votes, so your plan of alienating those voters from voting for her second is going to work out well for Peltola. Congrats! – sd

  23. Palin voters ranked Begich second & about 30% of Begich voters ranked Peltola second! And somehow Palin voters are to blame. Give me a break! The Republican elite in Alaska needs to get a grip on reality. They cannot just run roughshod over voters and always get their way!

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