Alaska set to release final results in special election with Peltola, Palin

Peltola has been leading Palin, who had around 31 percent support, by just over 16,000 votes. Alaska’s new system calls for voters to rank their choices, and, if no candidate clears 50 percent in the initial tally, for the last-place finisher to be eliminated and the votes for that candidate to be redistributed to their voters’ second choices.

Republican Nick Begich III was in third place, with just over 52,000 votes, or nearly 28 percent support, heading into Wednesday’s count. If that holds, the candidate picked by his supporters as their fallback choice will determine the outcome.

Tabulation of the results will be live-streamed by the state Division of Elections starting at 4 p.m. Alaska time (8 p.m. Eastern time), a division spokesperson said.

Political strategists said many of Begich’s supporters were likely to rank Palin second, since she is also running as a conservative. But it was unclear whether that would be the trend, or whether a different scenario unfolded when voters cast their ballots.

Those experts also said they expected the race to be close, as public opinion surveys have shown that many Alaskans — even conservative-leaning ones — have a negative view of Palin. Such voters may have ranked Peltola second, or ranked Begich first and left the rest of their ballot blank, leaving them as bystanders in the final round of counting, the strategists said.

“Everyone’s holding their breath,” said Michelle Sparck, who leads a nonpartisan, Indigenous education effort in Alaska called Get Out The Native Vote. “There’s really no math here, because we have no idea what the voters decided to do in this first scenario of ranked-choice voting in the state.”

Palin is running her first campaign since she stepped down as Alaska’s governor in 2009; former president Donald Trump endorsed her and held a rally on her behalf in Anchorage. Peltola’s campaign has focused on local issues, such as what to do about declining salmon returns.

Alaska’s special election results will come after other summer special elections for the House in which Democrats outperformed President Biden’s showing in the districts. Those outcomes, all following the Supreme Court decision to end a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, have been hailed by Democrats as encouraging signs for the November midterms that show voters are angered by the court’s decision and eager to vote for candidates supporting abortion rights.

The Alaska race adds another data point to the clues both parties are examining as they gear up for the stretch run to the Nov. 8 elections. But since it is being decided under a unique new voting system, the Alaska race could be harder to read as an indicator of the national environment than those contests.

The special election’s winner is expected to be sworn into office in mid-September. The winner will fill the seat left open by Don Young, the Republican who represented Alaska in Congress for 49 years and died suddenly in March.

Forty-eight candidates ran in a special primary election in June. That race narrowed the field to four — independent Al Gross later dropped out — before the Aug. 16 general election.

Meanwhile, a regularly scheduled election is playing out to decide who will hold the same U.S. House seat for the next two years, once the rest of Young’s term concludes. The special election was held to fill the vacant seat only until November, when the seat will again be contested in the regular midterm elections. The primary for that race also was held Aug. 16, and Peltola, Palin and Begich are projected to advance, according to the Associated Press. There will also be a fourth spot on the ranked-choice ballot in November.

Peltola, Palin and Begich were scheduled to hold a general-election debate at an oil industry conference on Wednesday, the same day the final tally was expected in the special election.

Palin, Begich and other conservatives have sharply criticized Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, and the nonpartisan primary system that accompanies it. Palin, in an election night statement, called it “convoluted,” “cockamamie” and untrustworthy.

The system’s supporters — some of whom are aligned with Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski — argue that it will result in the election of more-moderate candidates and reduce the risk of third-party politicians “spoiling” an election, because their supporters will be able also to rank mainstream candidates.

In the congressional race, Alaska Republicans have run a campaign urging voters to “rank the red” and fill out ballots for both Palin and Begich, rather than just one of them. Some said they expect that the education effort will translate into a Palin win once Wednesday’s count has been finished.

“We’re expecting that the majority of those — not all of them — will go to Sarah Palin,” said Cynthia Henry, one of Alaska’s representatives to the Republican National Committee. “If I were betting today, I would bet that she will emerge with more than 50 percent.”