Democrat Mary Peltola, the dark horse candidate who got just 10.1% of the vote in the special election primary, is now the candidate to beat for filling out Congressman Don Young’s term. The term ends in January and meanwhile, there’s another election underway for the two-year seat, and voters are going to get to decide again who is their congressional representative.
Of the 157,252 votes counted so far in Tuesday’s special general election for the temporary seat, 58,614 voters chose Peltola for that honor, according to the latest results from the Alaska Division of Elections.
By mid-day on Wednesday, 386 of 402 (96.02%) of the Aug. 16 precinct votes have been counted — at least as far as the first round of counting in the ranked choice voting scheme. Peltola is in the percentage lead with 38.05% of the vote. She’s followed by Alaska’s most famous export, Sarah Palin, who won 49,190 votes, or 31.93% of the vote.
Nick Begich trails in third place, and although he expects to do well in the absentee ballots, there are probably not enough to boost him over Palin. He’s come a long ways, but she still leads him by 3%.
The big unknown is where the second choice votes go. If all of Begich’s voters didn’t rank Palin second, Peltola could win the temporary seat. But many Begich voters did, in fact, vote for Palin second. That means in the second round of counting, Palin could add votes. She could pull ahead.
Palin, who told Steve Bannon that her preferred pronoun would be “congressman,” would then become the incumbent congressman that three others on the Nov. 8 ballot would have to beat in order to become the next congressional representative.
A significant portion of the time that ranked choice voting is used, according to experts at the Republican National Committee, there is a clear majority and there is no need for a second round of counting.
But 80% the time there’s a second round of counting, the first place winner ends up winning the race. This would suggest that Peltola could win against Palin.
Palin is an unpredictable entity and Alaskans won’t know until Aug. 31 or Sept. 1 whether the Begich voters chose anyone in second place, whether they picked Palin, or aligned with Peltola as their second choice.
Meanwhile, while Begich has said he voted for Palin in the second place, Palin told Peltola that she will vote for Peltola in November, presumably in the number 2 slot, according to a reporter from the New York Times:
