Palin's Chances of Beating Peltola in Midterm After Special Election Loss

In a political upset, Democrat Mary Peltola was declared the winner of Alaska's special House election on Wednesday after she successfully beat out Republican former Governor Sarah Palin in the state's new ranked-choice voting system.

Peltola, a former state lawmaker, will finish the remaining few months of Representative Don Young's term in Alaska's only U.S. House seat. Alaskans will head to the polls twice this year due to the rare special election that was called after Young's death in March. Young, who served as the state's lone congressman for nearly 50 years, was the longest-serving Republican in congressional history.

Peltola's name will be on the ballot again in November when voters determine who will represent them in Washington, D.C., for the 118th Congress.

Because Alaska is testing a new, unique election system, Peltola will be up against the same two Republican opponents, Palin and Nicholas Begich, during the general election.

As part of ranked-choice voting, voters are asked to rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority, officials eliminate the last-place candidate and redistribute the votes of their supporters to the other remaining candidates, based on who voters ranked second. If there is not a majority again, the same elimination process continues to take place until a candidate has at least 50 percent.

Republicans have blamed the ranked-choice system for Palin's loss, but because voters approved the system in a 2020 ballot initiative, the same system will be in place in the fall.

In primary contests, voters selected only one candidate but chose among all candidates in the race, regardless of party affiliation, then the four candidates with the highest number of votes will appear on the general ballot.

With 99 percent of the primary votes for the midterm election counted, the four candidates in the general election will be Palin, Peltola and Begich, and another Republican, Tara Sweeney.

A poll by Alaska Survey Research, which polled more than 1,400 registered voters at the end of July, found that using the ranked-choice system, Sweeney—who saw 7.9 percent in support compared to the double digits of her opponents—would be the first candidate to be eliminated from the race.

Once Sweeney's votes are redistributed, the next candidate to be eliminated would be Palin. With a slight edge over Palin, his 29.4 percent to her 28.7 percent would push Begich into the final round against Peltola, who received 41.9 percent in support.

In two hypothetical third rounds, if Begich were to be the final candidate against Peltola, the Republican would win comfortably with an 8-point lead. But, if the final two candidates end up being Peltola and Palin, the poll found that Palin would suffer an even greater loss than the one in the special election, losing by a margin of 5 points and handing Democrats the House seat.