The Washington Post ran an interesting story yesterday on how Sarah Palin could potentially cost the GOP one House seat in advance of the November vote, www.washingtonpost.com/...In the last election cycle Alaska voters passed a ranked-choice voting system to elect federal candidates. Under this system, the second choice of the also-rans is allocated to the front-runners based on the voters' election day rankings. There were two sets of elections in Alaska for their only House seat. One was to determine the nominees for the November contest. The other was to determine the immediate winner who would fill the vacancy created by the death of long-time GOP congressman Don Young. The Post article focused on the election to fill the immediate vacancy created by Young’s death.
They noted that as of Tuesday of this week, Democrat Peltola led with 38 percent of the vote, with Palin coming in at 32 percent, and Republican Nick Begich trailing with 28.6 percent. With 70 percent of the vote counted, under the new ranked-choice voting system, Begich will most likely be eliminated and his votes reallocated to Palin and Peltola, based on the second-choice preferences of his supporters. Most had assumed that since Begich was a Republican, Palin would be the second choice of his backers. While the article does concede that Palin probably is still the slight favorite to win when all the votes are reallocated at the end of the month, it is by no means guaranteed.
Some of Post’s takeaways include:
-Peltola is overperforming among absentee voters, many of whom have yet to be counted.
-Peltola is also overperforming in rural areas.
-There is a lot of resentment by voters against Palin quitting during the first year of her term.
-Peltola’s total share of first-choice votes could climb closer to 40 percent when all is said and done. That means she would only need about a third of the second-choice Begich voters to get a win.
Most election models are predicting a very narrow win by Palin when all the votes are all allocated by the end of the month. But those same models are showing Peltola running much more strongly than forecast with an upset as a distinct possibility. One can only hope.