If Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan wins re-election, Alaska’s ranked choice runoff system may deserve part of the credit.
Early Wednesday morning results published by the Alaska Division of Elections show Democratic challenger Mary Peltola leading Sullivan by 626 first-choice votes, but according to preliminary data published at 2:45 a.m. by the Alaska Division of Elections, Sullivan will gain hundreds more redistributed votes than Peltola if the race goes to a ranked choice runoff.
That scenario may change. The Division of Elections said Wednesday morning that 20,000 early votes remain uncounted, and as many as 40,000 absentee ballots may still need to be counted and added to the 215,341 votes already recorded by early Wednesday morning.
Under Alaska’s election system, if a general election candidate has more than 50% of the first-choice votes, they win outright, without a need to use ranked choice voting.
A Peltola win would help Democrats expand their control of the U.S. Senate, while a Sullivan win would at least mildly limit Democratic gains in the Senate during this week’s midterm elections.
Using RCTab, an open-source analysis and auditing tool, the Alaska Beacon analyzed a data file showing how 204,530 Alaskans ranked the four candidates for U.S. Senate as of Wednesday morning.
Sullivan would gain 2,728 votes when Republican challenger Gerald Heikes and independent Dan J. Sullivan are eliminated.
Peltola, meanwhile, would gain 1,868 votes from the same eliminations.
These figures come with major caveats.
The cast vote record doesn’t include ballots cast on Election Day at the 131 voting precincts without ballot scanners. Those precincts are primarily in rural areas that favor Peltola.
Altogether, about 11,000 ballots listed in the state’s first-choice results Wednesday morning are not included in the cast vote record.
The record also doesn’t include the early and absentee ballots that haven’t been counted at all.
Despite those gaps, the cast vote record does illustrate voting trends, including the way Heikes voters preferred Sen. Dan Sullivan as an additional choice.
Election Day figures show Dan J. Sullivan is the first candidate eliminated, and of 3,426 votes for him in the cast vote record, 991 would be distributed to Peltola. Sullivan would get 560 and Heikes would get 627. Another 608 would be dropped because of misvoting or because the voter picked no other candidate.
That result indicates little, if any, voter confusion between the incumbent Republican senator and Dan J. Sullivan, who was listed as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. on the ballot.
Members of the Republican Party in Alaska and nationally have claimed without evidence that a Peltola victory would be fraudulent because of confusion.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice about the issue; that decision is now on appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The AlaskaBeacon.com is a donor-funded independent news organization in Alaska.
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