Mary Peltola Gains In Alaska Special Election

[applegrove]

Mary Peltola Gains In Alaska Special Election

August 24, 2022 at 3:09 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 10 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2022/08/24/mary-peltola-gains-in-alaska-special-election/

"SNIP......

Mary Peltola (D) has slightly increased her lead in Alaska’s special U.S. House race, Alaska Public Media reports.

“The Division of Election released an update Tuesday in the three-way contest to see who will serve the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s (R-AK) term. With an additional 22,000 votes counted, Peltola gained over rivals Sarah Palin (R) and Nick Begich (R).”

“Peltola is now 7.5 percentage points ahead of Palin. She was 6 points ahead last week.”

.....SNIP"

[AZSkiffyGeek]

1. Have they moved to the second round of instant runoff yet?

[LonePirate]

3. That happens on August 31st.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

4. That will really tell where this is...

Once Begich’s votes get distributed…

[LonePirate]

7. Two big unknowns: how many Begich voters made no second choice and how many hate Palin

Ballots without a second choice are discarded thus reducing the pool. The higher that number is and the higher the number of his voters who hate Palin and refused to put her second, the better chance we have.

[applegrove]

6. I thought there was a vote last week. I guess it was for the November election.

[LonePirate]

8. This is a special election to fill the current empty seat following the death of Rep. Don Young.

The winner of this race only serves until January.

[onenote]

10. There were two votes on August 16

Voters cast ballots in both a primary for the November 8 general election and in a special election to fill that seat between now and the general election (it was made vacant when Don Young died),

There were around 20 candidates in the primary election to get on the November ballot. The top four finishers were Peltola, Palin, Begich and Tara Sweeney. Sweeney, who only got 3.7% of the vote is dropping out of the November election, so it will be a ranked voting contest between Peltola, Palin and Begich.

In the special election, there were three candidates -- Peltola, Palin and Begich (the fourth candidate to survive a June 2022 primary to get on the special election ballot, Al Gross, dropped out before the August vote. Voters could cast ranked ballots for those three. Because none of the three got 50% +1 of the votes in the August special election, the count will resume based on a ranked choice tabulation of the August special election ballots. Votes that named Begich as their first choice will be recounted with those votes going to whichever candidate (if any) was named as the second choice.

It's convoluted, to be sure. Here's a link to the sample ballot from the August 16 election (used for both the special election and the primary for the November election). https://www.elections.alaska.gov/election/2022/prim/HD99.pdf

[applegrove]

11. I thought so.

[Johnny2X2X]

5. Ranked choice

So now it's down to the ranked choice. The 2nd place choice for the 49,456 Nick Begich (R) will decide this. Peltola is up about 14,000 votes. So how many of Begich's voters didn't have Palin as their 2nd choice? Was their a rivalry there? Do we think a lot of Alskan voters just left their 2nd choice blank?

Because I could easily see Palin winning the 2nd choice on Begich's ballot by 30,000 votes.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

9. Yeah - I can see it going either way

Party loyalty vs Don’t want crazy.