New poll shows Nick Begich wins in ranked choice ballot

By
Suzanne Downing
-
17

A new poll by Alaska Survey Research shows that congressional candidate Nick Begich is the winner of a ranked choice scenario that includes him, and any combination of Sarah Palin, Al Gross, Santa Claus, John Coghill, Tara Sweeney, Josh Revak, Andrew Halcro, or a variety of the other candidates on the special election ballot to replace Congressman Don Young.

Using a range of different “final four” combinations, it appears that Nick Begich, who is a Republican, wins every time.

The survey was of 605 likely special election voters and was assigned a margin of error of +/-4%. The survey participants were registered voters who were at least 50-50 likely to vote in the special election. Results were weighted to bring variables into expected proportion: Region, gender, age, ethnicity, education level, party affiliation, and 2020 presidential vote.

In early April, Must Read Alaska contracted with Remington Research to do a poll with a few of the names on this poll, but did not take a ranked choice approach. This is the only poll to ask participants how they would rank a set of four candidates.

Read: Must Read Alaska poll shows Palin, Begich in front

Alaska Survey Research polls generally favor Democrats and this poll was done on behalf of Democrats, which has the party concerned that its brand-name candidates will not advance. Chris Constant and Mary Peltola are the leading Democrats among the 48 candidates on the special election ballot.

Here were the results:

The results of the poll explain why the Alaska Democratic Party has started attacking Al Gross, since the party needs to bump him from the final four to make way for a Democrat to be on the November ballot.

17 COMMENTS

  2. Long way to go here. I predict Santa Claus will get more votes than Constant or Gross in the primary.
    I met Nick at the Sunrise Inn bar Saturday evening. He is certainly an impressive and affable young man. We had a good conversation. I told him the story of being forced to wear the elephant costume at a campaign stop while helping Joe Hayes in his 1986 run for Governor. The children loved it but they kept pulling on my tail and I had to keep swatting them off. That just made it worse of course because they thought it was part of the fun. One of the adults seemed to have a dislike of mascots and I thought he was about to punch me. So I hightailed it back to the van and went back to the picnic in civilian attire.

  4. The Democrats best chance is a guy who they even call a loser and want nothing to do with! My guess is their tone will change when he’s the only Democrat in the top 4, it will be great to roll out their “proven loser” social media post when they back him in the general.

  6. It’s sad and disturbing that Gross garners even 45% in a two-way runoff with Nick.
    .
    Californians go home! And take two Seattleites with you!

  8. The poll is from Ivan Moore. No reasonable person would rely upon it given the routine manipulations of Mr. Moore. The danger here may be in that it may make Begich voters complacent.

  11. According to 538’s pollster ratings, Alaska Survey Research only gets it right 44 percent of the time….

    I need a job where i can get paid for being wrong 56 percent of the time….

  12. Sadly, this entire fiasco of having to endure four elections to get a representative to serve until 2024, lays entirely at the feet of Don Young.

    Had his ego allowed him to groom and endorse a successor, this never would have happened.

  13. He should have run for Governor, then sold his Washington DC house and job to one of his kids….oh wait
    that was already done.

  14. Nick Begich spoke last night at the AMAC meeting in Anchorage. He is has the right ideas about handling money and developing our resources. He is right on all the key issues. And he is very articulate. We have someone we can fully support. Go Nick!

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