Third-generation Alaskan Nick Begich, on his second run for Congress, is the favorite to win the 2024 race to unseat Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola, who won in 2022 after Sarah Palin jumped into the race and the last minute and split the Republicans.
As of Election Night, with all Nov. 5 and all the early votes cast through Oct. 31, Begich, a Republican, is ahead. He has 124,632 votes, for 49.66%. Peltola has 113,612 votes for 45.27%.
Third-party John Wayne Howe has 9,710 votes or 3.87% and Democrat Eric Hafner has 2,446, not quite 1% of the vote.
Only 155 absentee ballots came in from the heavy Peltola districts in rural Alaska, which indicates there will not be a lot more votes for her from that region, where turnout was low. More absentees and other votes received will be counted on Friday or next week.
Begich is on course to win Congress. There are not enough votes to get Peltola over the 50%+1 vote threshold.
It’s going to be hard for Peltola to catch Begich. With the outstanding ballots to be counted, she has to do 4.4% better than she has done with those ballots already counted. Begich only needs .2% to get to 50% of the remaining absentees, questioned, and early votes that came in over the weekend and Monday.
Then there is the ranking. Right now, there are about 10,000 votes from Howe and Hafner to be ranked. Peltola needs all of those, which is nearly mathematically impossible.
The caveat is Alaska has to wait to learn how many questioned, absentee and early votes have not been counted yet.
In Peltola’s favor is that the unreported precincts are all rural, and there are 28 precincts unreported.
However, these are tiny precincts, like Shishmaref, where Peltola got 78% of the vote — and prevailed there by a margin of 111 votes.
Not all the precincts that haven’t reported are that pro-Peltola. Shishmaref is one of her strongest. She might gain about 50 votes per precinct; that would be about 1,000 votes.
But with ranked-choice voting still in effect, Alaska may have to wait until Nov. 20 to have Begich declared the “official” winner. The delay in being able to call him the winner impacts Alaska’s role in Congress, as members are ranked in seniority depending on how long they have been in Congress. As happened for Peltola in 2022, ranked-choice voting put Alaska in nearly last place in seniority, another unwelcome gift by the ranked-choice voting scheme designed by Sen. Lisa Murkowski and her supporters.
