Alaska has just finished tallying it's votes in the Aug 16 Special Election runoff to fill Don Young's term, and the winner is Dem Native Alaskan (Yup'ik Eskimo) Mary Peltola. Young died in office, so this only fills the seat until Nov when his seat like every other House member is up for re-election. Essentially the same 3 candidates will again be on the ballot. so Palin (who finished 2nd) could still end up winning, but the dynamics and incumbency give Peltola a legitimate shot to retain the lone House seat AK has...
They use rank choice voting, but that only comes into play if one candidate fails to get 50%+ of the 1st place ballots. If Peltola can duplicate her majority in Nov she will win outright. But if no one get's a majority then the 3rd place candidate is eliminated and their votes are distributed to whoever their voters designated as 2nd choice. On the surfave that would seem to favor the GOP candidate left, but there is resentment between Palin and the other GOP candidate Nick Begich and among some AK voters over the way Palin just quit her job as Governor previously. So the idea that both Palin's voters and Begich's voters would rank their respective GOP opponent as their 2nd choice is not a given...
Meanwhile Peltola has focused on local issues like the decline in salmon runs (which is related to climate change), and is strongly pro-Choice. Even in conservative AK people feel like some abortions should be legal, and Palin is strongly pro-life. Course she may try to go the Blake Masters route and scrub her website and tone down her rhetoric. So we'll see how that plays...
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They use rank choice voting, but that only comes into play if one candidate fails to get 50%+ of the 1st place ballots. If Peltola can duplicate her majority in Nov she will win outright. But if no one get's a majority then the 3rd place candidate is eliminated and their votes are distributed to whoever their voters designated as 2nd choice. On the surfave that would seem to favor the GOP candidate left, but there is resentment between Palin and the other GOP candidate Nick Begich and among some AK voters over the way Palin just quit her job as Governor previously. So the idea that both Palin's voters and Begich's voters would rank their respective GOP opponent as their 2nd choice is not a given...
Meanwhile Peltola has focused on local issues like the decline in salmon runs (which is related to climate change), and is strongly pro-Choice. Even in conservative AK people feel like some abortions should be legal, and Palin is strongly pro-life. Course she may try to go the Blake Masters route and scrub her website and tone down her rhetoric. So we'll see how that plays...
Democrat Mary Peltola Makes History As First Alaska Native Elected To Congress
The former state representative pulled off an upset win to serve out the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s term.
