2022 Alaska's at-large congressional district special election

This article is about the special election. For the regularly-held election, see 2022 United States House of Representatives election in Alaska.
For broader coverage of this topic, see Alaska's at-large congressional district.

2022 Alaska's at-large congressional district special election
← 2020 August 16, 2022 November 2022 →
Alaska's at-large congressional district
Turnout32.2%[1]
 
Candidate Mary Peltola Sarah Palin Nick Begich III
Party Democratic Republican Republican
First round 74,817
39.7% 		58,339
30.9% 		52,536
27.8%
Final round 91,266
51.5% 		86,026
48.5% 		Eliminated
Peltola:      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%      80–90%
Palin:      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%
U.S. Representative before election

Don Young
Republican

Elected U.S. Representative

Mary Peltola
Democratic

The 2022 Alaska at-large congressional district special election was held on August 16 to fill the seat left vacant after the death of Republican incumbent Don Young.[2] Mary Peltola was elected in a 3-way race against former governor Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III in the election, becoming the first Alaska Native and woman to represent Alaska in the House.[3]

The election was the first to use Alaska's new ranked-choice voting (RCV) method, approved by voters in 2020. The winners of the top-four blanket primary advanced to the ranked-choice runoff election, but only three candidates competed (as Al Gross withdrew and endorsed Peltola). Peltola was declared the winner on August 31 after all ballots were counted.[4][5][6] Peltola's victory was widely seen as an upset in a traditionally Republican state. She became the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Alaska since 2008[7] and was sworn in on September 13.[8]

The results were praised by many pundits and activists. FairVote, a pro-RCV lobbying group, argued the low number of spoiled ballots proved Alaskans could use and understand the system.[9] Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang said the election served as a model for electing moderate candidates to office, regardless of partisan affiliation.[10]

By contrast, some scholars criticized the instant-runoff procedure for its pathological behavior,[11][12] the result of a center squeeze.[12][13][14] Although Mary Peltola received a plurality of first choice votes and won in the final round, a majority of voters ranked her last or left her off their ballot entirely.[12] Begich was eliminated in the first round, despite being preferred by a majority to each one of his opponents, with 53% of voters ranking him above Peltola.[12][15][16] However, Palin spoiled the election by splitting the first-round vote, leading to Begich's elimination and costing Republicans the seat.[12][17]

The election also exhibited nonmonotonic behavior,[17] where a voter's ballot has the opposite of its intended effect.[17][18] In this race, Begich lost as a result of at least 5,200 ballots with the ranking order Palin, Begich, Peltola; had those voters simply not participated at all, Begich would have beaten Peltola, a preferred outcome.[17][12] Similarly, had these Palin voters ranked Peltola first, Peltola would have lost to Begich, the same preferred outcome.[17][19]

In the wake of the election, a poll found 54% of Alaskans, including a third of Peltola voters, supported a repeal of RCV,[10] leading some observers to compare it to the 2009 Burlington mayoral election, where similar pathologies resulted in a 2010 initiative repealing the system.[20][21][22] Observers noted such pathologies would have occurred under Alaska's previous primary system as well, leading some to suggest Alaska adopt an alternative rule without this behavior.[11]

  1. ^ "State of Alaska | 2022 SPECIAL GENERAL ELECTION | Election Summary Report | August 16, 2022 | OFFICIAL RESULTS" (PDF). Alaska Division of Elections. September 2, 2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 17, 2022. Retrieved September 2, 2022.
  2. ^ Miller, Andrew Mark (March 18, 2022). "Alaska Republican Congressman Don Young dead at 88". Fox News. Archived from the original on March 19, 2022. Retrieved March 18, 2022.
  3. ^ Rockey, Tim (September 2022). "Peltola to become first Alaska Native, first female Alaska congresswoman". Alaskasnewssource.com. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  4. ^ Brooks, James (March 19, 2022). "Alaska's first ranked-choice election will be a special vote to replace Rep. Don Young". Anchorage Daily News. Archived from the original on March 23, 2022. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  5. ^ Iris Samuels. "Peltola again grows her lead, but final outcome in Alaska's U.S. House race is days away". Anchorage Daily News. Archived from the original on August 28, 2022. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  6. ^ "Democrat Mary Peltola wins special election to fill Alaska's U.S. House seat". Reuters. September 1, 2022. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  7. ^ Rakich, Nathaniel (September 1, 2022). "What Democrats' Win In Alaska Tells Us About November". FiveThirtyEight. Archived from the original on September 1, 2022. Retrieved September 1, 2022.
  8. ^ Media, Alaska Public; Media, Chris Klint, Alaska Public (September 13, 2022). "Mary Peltola makes history as first Alaska Native person sworn into Congress". KTOO. Retrieved May 19, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ Otis, Deb (August 31, 2022). "Results and analysis from Alaska's first RCV election". FairVote.
  10. ^ a b "North to the Future: Alaska's Ranked Choice Voting System is Praised and Criticized Nationally". Alaska Public Media. September 19, 2023.
  11. ^ a b Maskin, Eric; Foley, Edward B. (November 1, 2022). "Opinion: Alaska's ranked-choice voting is flawed. But there's an easy fix". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Graham-Squire, Adam; McCune, David (September 11, 2022). "A Mathematical Analysis of the 2022 Alaska Special Election for US House". p. 2. arXiv:2209.04764v3 [econ.GN]. Since Begich wins both … he is the Condorcet winner of the election … AK election also contains a Condorcet loser: Sarah Palin. … she is also a spoiler candidate
  13. ^ Clelland, Jeanne N. (February 28, 2023). "Ranked Choice Voting And the Center Squeeze in the Alaska 2022 Special Election: How Might Other Voting Methods Compare?". p. 6. arXiv:2303.00108v1 [cs.CY].
  14. ^ Atkinson, Nathan; Ganz, Scott C. (October 30, 2022). "The flaw in ranked-choice voting: rewarding extremists". The Hill. Retrieved May 14, 2023. However, ranked-choice voting makes it more difficult to elect moderate candidates when the electorate is polarized. For example, in a three-person race, the moderate candidate may be preferred by a majority of voters to each of the more extreme candidates. However, voters with far-left and far-right views will rank the candidate in second place rather than in first place. Since ranked-choice voting counts only the number of first-choice votes (among the remaining candidates), the moderate candidate would be eliminated in the first round, leaving one of the extreme candidates to be declared the winner.
  15. ^ Atkinson, Nathan; Ganz, Scott C. (October 30, 2022). "The flaw in ranked-choice voting: rewarding extremists". The Hill. Retrieved May 14, 2023. However, ranked-choice voting makes it more difficult to elect moderate candidates when the electorate is polarized. For example, in a three-person race, the moderate candidate may be preferred to each of the more extreme candidates by a majority of voters. However, voters with far-left and far-right views will rank the candidate in second place rather than in first place. Since ranked-choice voting counts only the number of first-choice votes (among the remaining candidates), the moderate candidate would be eliminated in the first round, leaving one of the extreme candidates to be declared the winner.
  16. ^ Clelland, Jeanne N. (February 28, 2023). "Ranked Choice Voting And the Center Squeeze in the Alaska 2022 Special Election: How Might Other Voting Methods Compare?". p. 6. arXiv:2303.00108v1 [cs.CY].
  17. ^ a b c d e Graham-Squire, Adam; McCune, David (January 2, 2024). "Ranked Choice Wackiness in Alaska". Math Horizons. 31 (1): 24–27. doi:10.1080/10724117.2023.2224675. ISSN 1072-4117.
  18. ^ Doron, Gideon; Kronick, Richard (1977). "Single Transferrable Vote: An Example of a Perverse Social Choice Function". American Journal of Political Science. 21 (2): 303–311. doi:10.2307/2110496. ISSN 0092-5853. JSTOR 2110496.
  19. ^ Hamlin, Aaron (September 16, 2022). "RCV Fools Palin Voters into Electing a Progressive Democrat". The Center for Election Science. Retrieved July 11, 2024. It's a good thing for Peltola that she didn't attract more Palin voters—she'd have lost. The strangeness continues. Peltola could have actually gotten more 1st choice votes in this election and caused herself to lose. How's that? Let's look. [...] Imagine if Peltola reached across the aisle and spoke directly to Palin voters. Imagine that she empathized with their position and identified issues they cared about that Palin and even Begich ignored. And let's say that as a consequence, Peltola got the first-choice votes of between 5,200 and 8,500 voters who would have otherwise ranked only Palin. What happens as a result? Palin would have gotten eliminated in the first round and Peltola would still not be able to beat Begich.
  20. ^ Baruth, Philip (March 12, 2009). "Voting Paradoxes and Perverse Outcomes: Political Scientist Tony Gierzynski Lays Out A Case Against Instant Runoff Voting". Vermont Daily Briefing. Archived from the original on July 26, 2011.
  21. ^ "Burlington voters repeal IRV". Wcax.com. March 2, 2010. Archived from the original on April 9, 2016. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  22. ^ "Instant run-off voting experiment ends in Burlington : Rutland Herald Online". Rutlandherald.com. April 27, 2010. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved April 1, 2016.