Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin became yet another Trump-endorsed candidate to lose in the 2022 midterms after NBC News projected that incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola will win the election to represent Alaska in the U.S. House of Representatives.
As noted by NBC News, “Peltola made history in August when she became the first Alaska Native seated in Congress after she won the special election to replace longtime GOP Rep. Don Young, who died in March at the age of 88.”
Peltola’s victory is a blow to GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans, who were handed a razor-thin majority in this month’s midterm elections. It means that a Democrat will hold the at-large House seat for the next two years, after Young and the GOP had controlled it for nearly five decades.
Shortly after news broke that she had won a full term on Wednesday night, Peltola tweeted “WE DID IT!!!”
The final results of the Nov. 8 election for the state’s at-large House seat — as well as other contests — had been delayed for weeks because of Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system where voters rank the candidates in order of preference.
The report from NBC News states that “after the first round of voting, Peltola led Palin by more than 20 percentage points, with Republican Nick Begich in third. But because Peltola failed to win more than 50 percent, the voting went to a second round with Begich eliminated and his votes redistributed to those voters’ second choice.
After the embarrassing defeat, Palin announced that she was the first person to sign a new ballot initiative to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system.
Meanwhile, in the Senate contest, incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski was re-elected Wednesday after ranked-choice runoff rounds, defeating a GOP challenger backed by Donald Trump.
