In Alaska’s congressional races, incumbents are well positioned to win, but they’ll have to wait until Nov. 23 to be sure. This is when the third and fourth place candidates will be eliminated and the ranked choices will be tabulated. Alaska Public Media’s Washington correspondent Liz Raskin explains why the results so far look good for the current moderate incumbents. I hear: [Sign up for Alaska Public Media’s daily newsletter to get our top stories delivered to your inbox.] The following transcript has been slightly edited for clarity. Casey Grove: Liz, in the Senate race, explained how Lisa Murkowski is likely to win. Because she is behind Kelly Tshibaka in first choice votes. Liz Ruskin: Murkowski is behind, by about 3,000 votes, according to the update this afternoon. This could close a bit as more postal ballots come in. And, as you said, so far, we’re only talking about first choice votes. Now, check out Democrat Pat Chesbro’s set. He got almost 10% of the vote, or 20,000 votes. How many of those ballots have Murkowski second? A lot, right? The data nerds I spoke to today believe there are many runners-up in Chesbro’s vote to re-elect Murkowski. However, the way I hear it, Tshibaka has a narrow path to victory. CG: Okay, so in the US House race, Mary Peltola is ahead. He has 47% of the vote. But the Republicans, Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, their combined total is more than 50%. Doesn’t that suggest that Palin, who is in second place, could win once Begich is disqualified and the ballots in his pile go to Palin? LR: Technically, that is possible. But the vast majority of Begich voters would have to rank Palin second, and that seems unlikely. In the special election, about half of his voters chose Palin as their runner-up. And about a third chose Peltola. Even if you think a lot more Begich voters will “blame red” this time, we know some of his voters don’t like Palin, some don’t like ranked voting and aren’t going to rank, and Peltola is like to get at least a small part of those Begić votes. So it doesn’t seem likely that there will be enough second votes for Palin in these polls to overcome Peltola. Again Peltola is at 47%. Palin is at 27%. That’s a lot of ground to make up. CG: Can you put these results in the context of the national election? LR: We are still waiting to see who will win the majority in the House and Senate. It seems likely that Republicans could win the House leadership and Democrats could retain the Senate. If so, and if the Alaskans win, they would be in the minority in both houses. CG: Well, that would mean no committee chairs for Alaska, right? LR: Yes, but there are a lot of “ifs” in this scenario. Many races remain undecided. It appears control of the Senate will hinge on a runoff next month in Georgia. One way Alaska IS like the rest of the country is that the candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump — Kelly Chibaka for the Senate and Sarah Palin for the House — don’t appear to be on track to win.
