Alaska is poised to declare winners in three midterm election races Wednesday night, two weeks after residents first cast their votes.
The delay was mostly due to the state’s new ranked choice voting system, in which tabulation takes days if there is no outright winner.
MURKOWSKI TAKES THE LEAD OVER CONSERVATIVE FOE IN ALASKA SENATE RACE
In the high-profile Senate race, incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, pulled ahead of challenger Kelly Tshibaka over the weekend and will likely secure her fourth full Senate term when the final tally is released.
Neither Murkowski nor Tshibaka, the two top candidates in the four-person contest, reached the 50% threshold needed for an outright win, which meant the winner would be decided by ranked choice tabulation.
Under that system, instead of picking a single candidate for office, Alaskan voters rank whom they wanted to fill a particular position. In the first round of counting, if no candidate makes it to the 50% mark, it goes to a second round, which starts with the candidate who got the fewest votes in the first round being eliminated. If the eliminated candidate was a voter’s top pick, his or her vote would go to the next choice.
Also adding to the decision delay are the lengthy time limits afforded to count votes. Early votes submitted between the Friday before the election and Election Day must be counted seven days after the election. Absentee ballots are counted seven days after the election but must end after 15 days. All votes must be counted by Nov. 23.
Murkowski is considered to be one of the more centrist Republicans in Congress, and a win for her could help President Joe Biden pass his agenda as well as extend Murkowski’s clout in the closely divided Senate.
Ahead of Wednesday’s new batch of numbers being released, Murkowski led Tshibaka 43.3% to 42.7%, with less than 1,700 votes separating the candidates. That gap is expected to widen significantly when the unofficial results are released later tonight.
In the House race, Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) is favored to beat a crowd of challengers, including Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and one-time vice presidential candidate.
Peltola has a commanding lead, with 48.7% support over Palin’s 25.8% and Nick Begich’s 23.4%.
Earlier this year, Peltola became the first Alaska Native woman elected to Congress when she won a 48-candidate-deep field vying to finish the rest of Republican Rep. Don Young’s term after he died in March. Her win of Alaska’s only House seat, which has been held by a Republican for a half-century, gave Democrats hope it could make inroads in Alaska. Following her victory, the Cook Political Report changed its forecast of the race from “likely Republican” to “toss-up.”
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Republicans have complained that Alaska’s new voting system is unfair, with Palin calling it a “cockamamie system” that is “very, very potentially fraught with fraud.”
In Alaska’s governor’s race, Wednesday’s updated tally may be enough for incumbent Gov. Mike Dunleavy to score an outright win against four challengers without the need for additional rounds.
