When I saw this headline from Fox News, Alaska Republican drops out of three-way House race, dealing surprise blow to Democrats nationally, I had a feeling that the analysis was going to be off, but it was far worse than I expected.
The “surprise” news is that the third-place finisher in Alaska’s primary for the US House of Representatives is dropping out. We may all recall that Alaska adopted a Top Four system that employs Rank Choice Voting (i.e., an instant run-off) in the second round (i.e., the general election round). This was first deployed for the House in the 2022 special election for the seat that I discussed here: N=1 Means, Well, Not a Lot.
In what may be a surprise blow to Democrats’ chances of holding a key red state seat in the U.S. House, Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom announced Friday she is suspending her campaign for Congress.
Dahlstrom was in what was essentially a three-way race with incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich III, who comes from a prominent political family in The Last Frontier.
While Dahlstrom did not immediately endorse Begich, she suggested in comments announcing her withdrawal that her reason for running was to see Peltola defeated.
Soooo, this doesn’t change the math save that it means that a winner might be declared in the first round, and not after the first-round votes are reallocated. I can’t decide if the author flatly does not understand the system about which they are reporting or if they are just trying to write a pro-Republican, anti-Democrat story (or, indeed ¿por qué no los dos?).
I guess that the phrase “essentially a three-way race” means that the author just doesn’t understand the process. I mean, why “essentially”? But more to the point: Top Four (or any run-off system) will eventually reduce the number of competitors to two.
All Dahlstrom has done here is allow voters to rank choice Begic and Peltola without having to worry about how they rank her.
Here’s the deal: yes, if this were a plurality (i.e., a simple majority, or just the most votes) contest, Peltola would benefit from running against two Republicans because of the increased chances that they would split the opposition vote.
But, of course, Top Four is, as noted, a run-off system that reallocates second, third, etc. preferences to produce a candidate who has absolute majority support (i.e., at least 50%+1). It is essentially the same thing as run-off elections used in various parts of the country (such as for primaries in my state of Alabama or to elect members of Congress next door in Georgia) with the main difference being that this kind of run-off is instantaneous, as opposed to happening at two different times over the course of weeks. Voters rank their choices. While I know that it is not something Americans are used to, it truly is not that complicated.
And yet, we get this grossly incorrect statement:
Due to the state enacting ranked choice voting by popular vote in 2020, elections in Alaska now differ from most other states in that the candidate to gain the majority of the votes is not necessarily declared the winner.
This is where it feels a bit propaganda-y to me. It seems like the goal is to confuse people about the nature of the contest and to focus solely on the first round of voting and ignore that voters rank their choices and that there are subsequent rounds. For that matter, it is possible in any multi-round contest for the candidate who wins the most votes in the first round to go on and lose in the second round once it is a two-person race.
Further, the above clearly is confusing simple and absolute majorities. Because even in Top Four, if a candidate wins the absolute majority in the first round, they win outright.
The only charitable interpretation of this statement is that the author does not understand the difference between a simple majority and an absolute majority.
But really, more importantly, the following is a pure GOP attack line from the 2022 special election:
Though the two GOP candidates garnered more votes than Peltola, she was named the winner after the hierarchical rounds of ranked choice vote tallying concluded. Under the system, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated, and that candidate’s voters’ “second-choice” votes get tallied instead, and so on.
This is a crazy critique because it ignores the fact that if Alaska used the system most states use, plurality winner, then the sum total of the losers in the election is not the issue. If I win 40% and two candidates combine to win 60% (say 35% and 25%), I still win in a plurality contest. Of course, the only reason there were two Republicans and one Democrat and further why voters were willing to initially split their votes is because everyone knew that it was a multi-round process!
The funny thing about all of this is that with the exception of the primary stage of the 2022 special election primary, Peltola has won the plurality (or better) in four straight contests (2022 special election first round, 2022 general election primary, 2022 general election first round, and the 2024 primary).
In other words, it isn’t even as if Peltola was in third place and then managed to climb to first in these elections. With one exception, which was in an extremely crowded field in an inaugural process, she has been the most popular candidate in each election.
Let’s review.
The 2022 special election primary went as follows.
This led to Begich (30,861), Palin (43,601), Peltola (16,265), and Gross (20,392) qualifying for the second round. Gross dropped out. This was the first time such a primary was held under the Top Four system. It was Pelota’s worst showing in the mix.
The 2022 special election itself went as follows. Note that had this been a “normal” plurality election, Peltola would have won (although, yes, she wouldn’t have been running against two Reps).
It took only two rounds before Peltola won the absolute majority:
Full results here.
Here’s the 2022 general election first round. Here she is within spittin’ distance of an absolute majority in the first round.
It took three rounds and she ended up with 54.96% (full results here).
And here is this year’s primary result. Here she won 50.36% of the vote! Granted, this is a low-turnout primary. Nonetheless, the fact that Dahlstrom only was able to register 19.96% of the vote might explain why she dropped out.
Given that Alaska is a red state (voting 52.83% for Trump in 2020), it will be more difficult for Peltola to be re-elected. Still, it will have precious little to do with Dahlstrom dropping out. All that does is make it a two-way race between Peltola and Begich, and Peltola has beaten him several times already. There may be a third candidate (Salisbury) but their performance in the primary suggests to me that this current round of Top Four will end up being a two-person contest with a reallocation of the third-place votes being unneeded.
But back to the FNC coverage. In my view, it is a combination of failure to understand the process coupled with an editorial point-of-view that any reform that seems to help Democrats must be flawed.
And look, I am not a big fan of Top Four because the root problem is the usage of single-seat districts, not the lack of requiring absolute majority winners. Still, it is dishonest, and flatly poor journalism to not have an honest assessment of how the process works and, moreover, to simply see it through partisan lenses.
Update/Side Note: I know that it is early, but it is interesting to note how hard a time they are having getting to Top Four in the general.
