We also have been watching Alaska which has ranked voting. With 95% votes counted, Alaska has one Senate and one House seat that has not yet been decided. Sen. Murkowski (R) running for re-election won 43.3% of the vote and Kelly Tshibaka (R), endorsed by Trump, received 42.7% of the votes. With ranked voting, however, we assume that the second-choice for votes that went to the Democrat candidate Patricia Chesbro who got 10.3% of the votes will go to Murkowski.
There are 435 seats in the House – Republicans winning a majority of 218 seats will now lead the agenda in the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats lost 9 seats (current count 212) and Republicans gained 8 seats (218). However, five races have yet to be called. With razor thin margins in Colorado and three close races in California (who just take a long time counting votes) still indicate that those races are leaning Republican. In Alaska, however, the Democratic candidate is likely to be the first Alaskan Native voted to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Mary Petola is a Yup’ik Alaska Native and Democrat who represented the Bethel region in the Alaska House of Representatives for 10 years. She has been fishing commercially since she was six years old when she started fishing with her father. In college, she worked as a herring and salmon technician for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. She has worked both as a representatives in the Alaska state legislature, as well as the manager of Community Development and Sustainability for the Donlin gold mine project, and executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. She helped mobilize 118 Tribes and rural Alaskans to advocate for the protection of salmon runs in Western Alaska.
Mary Peltola (D), running for a seat in the U.S. House, received 48.7%, while the Republican candidates Sarah Palin and Nick Begichs split the Republican vote 26-24. She previously defeated former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and Alaska Policy Forum board member Nick Begick in a special election last August becoming the first Alaska Native member of Congress. In ranked vote, if a candidate does not receive a clear majority, they go back to the ballots and look at the candidate with the fewerst votes and redistribute the votes by the 2nd choice marked on the ballot. If all the second choice votes go to Peltola, she will win by more than 50%. If not, then they look at the next lowest and redistribute based on the 2nd choice marked. Considering that Begich is Republican, but more moderate than Palin, we assume that most of the 2nd choice votes would go to Palin but enough votes will go to Peltola to confirm her nomination to the House.
Update: After counting instant-runoff votes, Murkowski-R retained her seat in the U.S. Senate a majority of 53.7% against Tshibaka-R with 46.3% and Peltola-D was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives with a majority of 54.9% against Palin-R with 45.1%.