Republicans, Democrats examine value of ranked-choice voting for challengers, incumbents

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) — The primary election results have been released and some Republican challengers have dropped out of their races, creating a pathway for the other Republican candidates to face the Democratic incumbent head-to-head.

Some Republican challengers believe this will work to their advantage in the general election’s ranked-choice voting system.

Before the primary, U.S. House candidate Nick Begich said he would step aside if another Republican finished ahead of him in the race against incumbent Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola, saying the best chance to replace Peltola is to have a one-on-one contest.

He will have that one-on-one contest now that Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom has dropped out of the race.

The Republican challenger looked back at the 2022 race, in which Begich split the vote in the general election with former Gov. Sarah Palin in the first two rounds.

Once Begich was eliminated in the third round, Palin didn’t pick up the votes needed to beat Peltola.

“When we went back and looked at the regular election in 2022, what we saw was that about 29% of Alaskan voters chose not to rank a second choice,” Begich said. “And so when you’ve got more than one person credibly running from one side of the aisle, you’re going to encounter some of that ballot exhaustion, and the other side of the aisle is not going to have that.”

With no guarantee that Dahlstrom voters will vote for him, Begich was asked if he is concerned that the lieutenant governor has not endorsed him yet.

“Whether we’re my votes or her votes, I think those voters are ready to replace Mary Peltola in Congress,” Begich said.

Alaska Democratic Party chair Michael Wenstrup said he doesn’t see a one-on-one contest to Peltola as a threat, and the Republican’s failures in 2022 weren’t a result of ranked-choice voting but candidate quality.

“Nick Begich and Sarah Palin spent the last cycle sort of trying to out-extreme Republicans, you know, try to get to who’s more extreme, and the voters didn’t like that,” Wenstrup said.

Pollster Ivan Moore said there is no math to prove that one party consolidating the field after the primary will lead to better outcomes in the general election.

He said the problem in 2022 was Begich and Palin spent as much time fighting each other as they did Peltola.

“The ... analogy I like to compare it to is like riding the Tour de France, right? You ride in teams, and the teams understand who the leader is, and the teams work towards someone in the team winning, usually the leader,” Moore explained. “And so the analogy in this situation would be, would the leader be better off if all the other teammates dropped out? It’s like absurd.”

Rep. Tom McKay, R-Anchorage, has dropped out of his Senate race against incumbent Democrat Sen. Matt Claman, saying he also wanted to create a better pathway for a Republican challenger.

The general election is on Nov. 5, and candidates have until Sept. 9 to withdraw their names from the general election ballot.

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