Alaska House Race Outcome To Remain Unclear Until Nov. 20

Alaska voters will apparently have to wait a while longer to find out who won the closely watched race for the state’s sole House seat, currently held by Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat.

None of the four candidates on the general election ballot drew a majority of first place votes Tuesday in Alaska’s ranked choice voting system, meaning another tabulation will be needed to determine a winner.

On Wednesday, Republican Nick Begich led, with 49.8% of the vote, with Peltola trailing, at 45.5%.

The results of a second tabulation, and any more required, would be released Nov. 20, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.

In August, during the primary election, Peltola had the largest proportion of votes at 50.9%. But it is unclear whether she will pick up enough votes from supporters of other candidates who drop off the ballot with each tabulation round. That happened in 2022, when she defeated former Gov. Sarah Palin for the seat.

Under Alaska’s ranked choice voting system, used by only one other state in Maine, voters rank their picks in a field of candidates instead of only picking one candidate to vote for. If no one gets a majority of first place votes, then the second round of tabulation begins, with the first place votes of the lowest-ranked candidate thrown out and the second place choices of those voters allocated among the remaining candidates. This process goes on until a candidate gets a majority.

The 2024 race was a rematch of sorts between Peltola and Nick Begich, whose grandfather of the same name posthumously won election to the House in 1972 when his plane disappeared but his name could not be taken off the ballot. An uncle of Begich’s, Mark, was also an Alaska senator. In 2022, enough of Begich’s supporters chose Peltola over Palin with their second choice votes to give Peltola the House seat.

But Republicans had hoped for a different scenario this time. After the primary, the third- and fourth-place candidates dropped out, moving the fifth- and sixth-place ones up into the final four names on the ballot. One of those, Eric Hafner, is serving time in a New York jail, and Democrats charged he was maneuvered onto the ballot as a second Democrat to help swing the election to Begich.

Peltola made history as the first Alaska Native elected to represent the state in the House. Peltola is Yup’ik, and Alaska has the largest proportions of Indigenous residents of any state, at about 20.4%. Peltola’s seat was held by longtime Rep. Don Young, a Republican, for 49 years until his death in 2022. While Peltola has tried to carve out a niche as a moderate, House Republicans targeted it early in the 2024 cycle and the Cook Political Report listed the race as a toss-up.

See full results from the Alaska House election here.