When Alaska Used Ranked-Choice Voting and the Front-Runner Lost

On August 16, 2022, Alaska counted the first round of its special U.S. House election using ranked-choice voting: Republican Nick Begich led with 28.5% of first-choice votes, followed by Democrat Mary Peltola at 27.1% and Republican Sarah Palin at 22.5%. Under a plurality system, Begich would likely have won. Under ranked-choice voting, the outcome was different.

After the candidate with the fewest votes — independent Al Gross — was eliminated and his preferences redistributed, the field narrowed to three. When Palin was eliminated in the third round, her voters' second-choice preferences were split: roughly 50% went to Begich, and 27% went to Peltola. The remaining Palin voters had ranked no further preference and were exhausted from the count. Peltola won 51.5% to 48.5%.

Alaska had adopted ranked-choice voting through Ballot Measure 2 in November 2020, a citizen initiative that passed 50.55% to 49.45%. The measure simultaneously created a nonpartisan open primary, where the top four candidates from a single pool advance to the general election.

The result was notable on two counts. Peltola became the first Alaska Native elected to the U.S. House, and the first Democrat to hold Alaska's at-large House seat since 1972. She also benefited from a dynamic that ranked-choice supporters argue is a structural feature: when a split vote would have handed the election to a candidate many voters least preferred, the reallocation corrected for it.

Critics of the system pointed to the same dynamic from the opposite angle — that a candidate with the most first-choice votes had lost. Alaska voters narrowly retained the system in a 2024 ballot measure, 50.2% to 49.8%.