Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola flips House seat in special election, defeating Sarah Palin

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Originally published at: Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola flips House seat in special election, defeating Sarah Palin | Boing Boing

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It’s official: Sarah Palin is a loser.

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Alaskans haven’t forgotten that last time they put Palin in elected office she quit halfway through her first term for no intelligible reason.

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… AND A QUITTER :-1:

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Ranked choice voting (the first time this has been tried in Alaska) has a lot to say about this win. Also note, she is up for re-election this November as this was a special election for the representative who died, and whether she can retain that seat (#2 and #3 votes went to Republicans) remains to be seen. A good test ahead for ranked-choice and the Republican party in Alaska.

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Great, can Sarah Palin now please go back to being a forgotten has-been, this time for good?

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It’s good news for the whole country because a Democratic win means it’s that much less likely that the Republicans will manage to take back the House in November.

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she quit halfway through her first term for no intelligible reason.

Intelligible, or intelligent?

I thought she quit to get her grift on, with a stupid reality tv show and such, but it didn’t pan out all that well.

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Only if she wins again in November. Anyone know who else is running for that?

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AFAIK, the same people who were in the special election. Nick Begich and Sarah Palin, unless one of them pulls out.

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In your face, Sarah Palin!

(I’m extra thrilled because “Peltola” is a Finnish name. Yes, she took it in a marriage, but still!)

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She won against two Republicans in a state where Ranked Choice voting would strongly imply that someone voting for one GOP candidate would likely rank the other second in case their first didn’t win. In fact, though, 29% of GOP voters ranked the DEMOCRAT their second choice. As much as journalists want to run from any talk of bellwethers and try to keep things a horse race, that very fucking clearly says “You caught the Roe v. Wade car at last, and you’re going to pay for that.”

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It’s worth noting that Sarah Palin apparently attributed her loss to ranked vote system, calling it “a mistake for Alaska”.

You think she’s still living in that GOP reality bubble? Esp. when she claimed she’s off “to reload”?

At least they didn’t scream “fake news” or claim “ballot fraud” this time. Or did they and we just didn’t hear it?

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ROEVEMBER IS COMING!!! #votebluein22

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It’s wild to see how the GOP can’t seem to get their gaggle of voters together but hey it’s their loss. They whined about ranked choice voting all the time but didn’t educate their own state party operatives to help them instruct their base how to vote. :person_shrugging:

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Hopefully the general election plays out exactly the same way, but if Palin were to drop out now and encourage all her voters to support the Republican Nick Begich, and they actually did so, then Begich would get somewhere around 60% of the vote. The fact that 29% of Begich voters couldn’t stomach Palin is what led to victory here.

I don’t expect Palin to make a decision “for the good of her party” or any other reason other than pure selfishness, but there’s definitely precedent for her quitting. Fingers crossed that whatever she does, Peltola still wins again.

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Or maybe they tried and it didn’t take. Most Republicans I know would have a tough time even wrapping their brains around that concept, let alone carry it through in a voting booth.

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It does, but I think in a three way race with two creditable R candidates and one D that ranked choice in theory would actually help both the R candidates far more then the D candidate.

In practice apparently a surprising percentage of votes were not “RR” but actually “RD”.

(and yes Mary Pelota would have won a straight vote if all the ranked choice #1 votes actually would have matched whatever people would have voted if forced to only have a single pick…but an unproven but strong conjecture is with a single pick people twist themselves into knots and don’t vote for who they want but take a guess on who might be able to win and vote for the best out of that)

Yes, exactly that. I found it surprising. I wonder if that is generally true, or specific to Alaska, or specific to the car catching you so aptly state:

I have nothing to add to that, I just love the turn of phrase.

In theory it could be, but I really expect it wasn’t. What it really did do is provide some hard to deny evidence that a huge percentage of Republican voters don’t like her (or at least think she would not be a good representative for Alaska)

I dunno, it seems easy “write all the republicans in, don’t write any of the democrats in, put this republican first, do the rest in whatever order you like”

Maybe we should give more credit to the almost 29% of voters that were like “I like this republican, but no Palin, I want the democrat more than Palin”?

I mean maybe not a whole lot of credit because they did pick an R candidate, but hey I’m not in Alaska, maybe that one particular republican is the good one?

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I got plenty of “Don’t rank Peltola” mailers from the AK GOP - Begich and Palin pissing on each other hurt them

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