While Peltola has had more first-choice votes since Election Day, preliminary calculations by the Alaska Beacon have shown Sullivan leading when the results of the state’s ranked choice runoff are considered.
But on Monday, Peltola gained enough first-choice votes to outweigh Sullivan’s runoff advantage. As of 4 p.m., she led Sullivan by 2,517 votes out of 219,342 cast. Republican candidate Gerald Heikes and independent Dan J. Sullivan were a distant third and fourth, respectively.
Under Alaska’s election system, if one candidate in a race has more than 50% of the first-choice votes, they win. If no candidate does, a ranked choice runoff is used to decide the winner.
The candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and voters who picked them have their votes go to their second choices.
The elimination process continues until two candidates are left, and the person with the most votes wins.
Preliminary calculations from Election Day showed Sen. Sullivan would gain more than enough votes from that redistribution to overcome Peltola’s lead.
But with Monday’s update, Peltola has a big enough advantage in first-choice votes to overcome the Sullivan redistribution.
With 48.5% of the first choice votes, she is also coming closer to the threshold needed to win the race without the runoff.
That could change on Tuesday.
I don’t think redistribution is gonna help Danny boy as much as he thinks. I saw that nearly half of those who ranked the non incumbent Sullivan chose Peltola as their second choice. Meaning after one round of redistribution she should have the threshold met, if it’s even necessary.
Bye Dan
