Incumbent Alaska Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola has defeated her general election challengers including former Gov. Sarah Palin to represent Alaska’s at-large congressional district for a full term in the House, The Associated Press projects.
Alaska’s sole congressional district is currently represented by Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola after she won a special election in August to fill the remainder of former GOP Rep. Don Young’s term, which ends in January 2023.
Four candidates advanced to the November general election in August, including Peltola, Palin, Republican Nick Begich, and libertarian Chris Bye.
The general House election in Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, a system approved by Alaska residents in 2020 that dismissed the state’s previous election method consisting of partisan primary elections ahead of general elections. Under ranked-choice voting, candidates of all parties in the general election appeared on the same ballot.
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From left to right: Alaska GOP House candidate Nick Begich, Alaska GOP House candidate Sarah Palin, and Alaska Democrat House candidate Mary Peltola.
(Brandon Bell, Mary Peltola campaign, Ash Adams for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Ranked-choice voting allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference on their ballots. Should one candidate receive a majority of first-preference votes, that individual is declared the winner in the race. However, if no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. Following the elimination of the candidate who received the least amount of first-preference votes, voters’ second-preference choices are evaluated and a new tally is established to determine whether a candidate in the race has received a majority of the vote. That process is repeated until a candidate wins over 50 % of the vote.
Palin, in an opinion piece published by the Anchorage Daily News in October, said the ranked-choice voting system, used for the first time in the special election won by Peltola, had “produced the travesty of sending a Democrat to Congress to represent Alaska, one of the reddest states in the country.”
The candidates in the race were all provided with an opportunity late last month in a debate to address concerns among voters…
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