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Mary Peltola’s win in Alaska’s special election on Wednesday appears to bolster what election analysts have suspected for weeks — Democrats’ political fortunes are improving in what was expected to be a red wave election year.
Peltola, the first Democrat to win statewide office since 2008, bested ex-Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican, in a contest to finish out the term of Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who died in March.
REPUBLICAN WAVE OR RED MIRAGE? RECENT DEMOCRATIC WINS DIM GOP FALL LANDSLIDE HOPES
The special election is the fifth since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June and follows a surprise win for Democrat Pat Ryan in New York’s 19th District, which was considered a bellwether for November’s midterm elections.
Democrats lost the three other races, each in right-leaning districts, but beneath those defeats is a striking trend: Democrats have lost by smaller margins than President Joe Biden did in 2020, suggesting the party has been able to turn out its base after the Supreme Court rolled back abortion rights at the federal level.
Combined with a string of legislative victories these last few months, Democrats are feeling more optimistic heading into November’s midterm elections.
Earlier this year, political handicappers forecast that Republicans would decidedly win back the House and had better-than-even odds of reclaiming the Senate against the backdrop of high inflation and low approval ratings for President Joe Biden. But with the primaries largely over, the landscape has shifted: Republicans are expected to secure a smaller House majority, and Democrats are now favored to keep the Senate.
“The political environment has changed drastically in the last couple of months,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told the Washington Examiner. “I think it all started with the Dobbs decision. … That started to reverse the red wave. Then gas prices started to go down, Joe Biden’s approval ratings started to go up, and Donald Trump got into big-time legal problems. And I think the sum of all that has definitely slowed down the red wave and turned it into the red ripple.”
The special elections are one data point in that calculus, as is polling showing Republicans behind in competitive Senate races. With about 10 weeks to go until Election Day, these numbers can change as both parties get ready to spend millions blasting the airwaves with campaign ads.
But the special election contests are an interesting test case. Better than polls, which have margins of error, special elections reflect actual voters casting ballots, so naturally, election analysts watch them closely.
And so far, most think the election results bode well for Democrats, who outperformed Biden even as they lost races in unfavorable districts.
Democrats lost by 5 points in Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District in June, compared to a 15-point defeat for Biden; by 4 points last month in Minnesota’s 1st District, where Biden lost by 10 points; and by 6.6 points in New York’s 23rd District, compared to Biden’s 11 points. Taken together with the wins for Peltola and Ryan, election analysts see a pattern that could aid Democrats in November as each party seeks to rally its base.
It’s important, though, not to read too much into the numbers, said Dave Wasserman, an editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, who raised what he called a “caution flag.” The voter turnout for special elections is far below that of presidential elections, and recent races have not broken 40% of 2020’s turnout.
“This isn’t to say the [environment] hasn’t improved for Dems,” Wasserman tweeted on Aug. 24, before Peltola’s win. “It has. But specials can’t tell us the extent of improvement [with] the fuller electorate.”
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1562319734921695232A word of caution also extends to Alaska’s special election. The state used ranked choice voting for the first time this cycle, trying out a system that tends to favor centrists. Under that system, voters rank their candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate clears 50% of the vote, the one with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated.
In Wednesday’s contest, that candidate was Republican businessman Nick Begich. The second-place votes on his ballots were then distributed to Palin and Peltola, who came out ahead with 51.5% of the vote.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
GOP strategists believe that were the race a traditional general election, a Republican may very well have prevailed.
“At the end of the day, 60% of Alaska voters voted for the Republican candidates. I think it’s more an issue with rank choice voting than it is with our midterm efforts,” Devin Bilski, a GOP campaign strategist, told the Washington Examiner. “Nearly two-thirds of voters voted for Republicans in the first round, and somehow, the Democrat ended up winning. So, in terms of the midterms, I don’t think it has any impact whatsoever. I think it’s an anomaly just based on the unique voting system of Alaska.”
