Alaska's special election under a conventional voting system

[Reactionary Libertarian]

Palin would have won the GOP primary, then faced Peltola in the general. Probably would be closer than under RCV, but still conceivable that Peltola could eke out a win. Either way there would be a big Dem overperformance.

[South Dakota Democrat]

My math may be wrong. But Peltola only won because so many Begich voters did not put a second choice, exhausting their ballot

I showed in my first post that this was most likely not the case. Saying "Palin would have won all the exhausted votes" is pretty lazy.

Palin only needed 5,000 votes to win.  Hard not to imagine a scenario under a traditional system where that wouldn't have happened.  A lot of people simply didn't know how the system worked.  It's essentially a form of voter fraud by disenfranchising Republican voters.

No.

[wesmoorenerd]

My math may be wrong. But Peltola only won because so many Begich voters did not put a second choice, exhausting their ballot

I showed in my first post that this was most likely not the case. Saying "Palin would have won all the exhausted votes" is pretty lazy.

Palin only needed 5,000 votes to win.  Hard not to imagine a scenario under a traditional system where that wouldn't have happened.  A lot of people simply didn't know how the system worked.  It's essentially a form of voter fraud by disenfranchising Republican voters.

You're right, Republicans are disproportionately likely to not know how to read.

[wesmoorenerd]

As for all the Republicans seething about an RCV system you believe to be illogical and undemocratic, just wait until you learn about the Electoral College!

[Spectator]

But if Begich voters didn't understand this, then they may not be real happy with the end result if what they really preferred was a Republican.

Why do you think Republican voters are this stupid?  It's sad you feel this way about supporters of your own party, tbh.

It's a new consideration; considering the ramification of choosing vs. not choosing a "2nd choice" or "ranked choices" (if there are more than 2 candidates from your party in a "Jungle Primary" format (where Ds and Rs and Is all appear on the same ballot). 

I'm sure lots of voters didn't think twice about the consequences of this until they went to vote, and, even, then, it may not have been clear.

It’s about as difficult of a concept as tying your shoes.

[Spectator]

I did the math. Very rough math that may be wrong.

But in a conventional election, I think Palin wins 51-49%

Can you show your work? Because if you allocate the 11.4k exhausted votes the same way the non-exhausted votes were (37.2% Peltola, 62.8% Palin), it comes out to about 95.4k votes for Peltola and 93.1k votes for Palin.

Sorry for the late reply

In the first round, Peltola got 40.19. Palin got 31.27 and Begich got 28.53 percent.

28.7 of Begich votes put Peltola as their second choice. 50.4 put Palin. 20.9 did not put a second choice.

If we assume Palin won a tradational Republican primary and all the Begich voters who put Peltola as second choice voted for her in the general, that leaves Peltoa with 48% of the vote in the general

My math may be wrong. But Peltola only won because so many Begich voters did not put a second choice, exhausting their ballot

Aren’t you assuming Palin wins all of Begich’s exhausted votes in that scenario? I don’t think that’s a good assumption.

While we can not know for sure what percentage of Begich's exhausted votes would have voted for Palin, I think most would have.

If they wanted Peltola as their second choice, they would have put her as their second choice. Sure, some did not want either Palin or Peltoa. These folks are like the Republicans who would have voted for Kasich or Rubio, but never Trump or Hillary. So basically a group incredibly few in number.

That is frankly lazy and insulting analysis to assume those 20% of exhausted voters would have went to Palin by large enough a margin to overcome Peltola’s 5,000+ vote lead. A little over 10,000 Begich voters abstained, and to win Palin would have needed at least a 75-25 percentage point margin, and I don’t see that happening based on how Peltola kept Palin to a relatively small 50-29 margin among Begich’s 2nd place voters. Peltola almost certainly wins a head to head match up in the normal against Palin if you hold all else constant, like the voter composition and no indie splitting the anti-Palin vote.

[Ferguson97]

The idea that people are too dumb to understand ranking their preferences is just hilarious to me. Go ask anyone to list their top 5 favorite movies or foods, they won't have a problem.

[It’s so Joever]

My math may be wrong. But Peltola only won because so many Begich voters did not put a second choice, exhausting their ballot

I showed in my first post that this was most likely not the case. Saying "Palin would have won all the exhausted votes" is pretty lazy.

Palin only needed 5,000 votes to win.  Hard not to imagine a scenario under a traditional system where that wouldn't have happened.  A lot of people simply didn't know how the system worked.  It's essentially a form of voter fraud by disenfranchising Republican voters.

Not necessarily. In a conventional primary and general style election, the equivalent result would be if Palin won the GOP primary, but just enough of Begich's voters either didn't vote or crossed over for Peltola to give her the win (which is not unlikely given Begich's family history in Democratic politics and the state's quirky coalition-style politics being more Democratic state downballot). There's no guarantee that Palin would have been able to consolidate all voters whose ballots were exhausted. If anything, one could also make the case that some of these exhausted Begich/write-in voters were showing a vote of no confidence in Palin as a candidate and could have been open to voting for Peltola in a standard general election.

Regardless, Alaskan voters approved RCV, which was well-known to the public before the election (hardly a case of "voter fraud" or whatever). It's incumbent on the candidates to be shrewd enough to play by the rules established in a given electoral system.

I really don't like this system.  Not at all.  This system is an example of it's not who votes for whom; it's how the votes are counted up.

Agree, we shouldn’t be counting votes.

[SteveRogers]

My math may be wrong. But Peltola only won because so many Begich voters did not put a second choice, exhausting their ballot

I showed in my first post that this was most likely not the case. Saying "Palin would have won all the exhausted votes" is pretty lazy.

Palin only needed 5,000 votes to win.  Hard not to imagine a scenario under a traditional system where that wouldn't have happened.  A lot of people simply didn't know how the system worked.  It's essentially a form of voter fraud by disenfranchising Republican voters.

Not necessarily. In a conventional primary and general style election, the equivalent result would be if Palin won the GOP primary, but just enough of Begich's voters either didn't vote or crossed over for Peltola to give her the win (which is not unlikely given Begich's family history in Democratic politics and the state's quirky coalition-style politics being more Democratic state downballot). There's no guarantee that Palin would have been able to consolidate all voters whose ballots were exhausted. If anything, one could also make the case that some of these exhausted Begich/write-in voters were showing a vote of no confidence in Palin as a candidate and could have been open to voting for Peltola in a standard general election.

Regardless, Alaskan voters approved RCV, which was well-known to the public before the election (hardly a case of "voter fraud" or whatever). It's incumbent on the candidates to be shrewd enough to play by the rules established in a given electoral system.

I really don't like this system.  Not at all.  This system is an example of it's not who votes for whom; it's how the votes are counted up.

There’s nothing particularly complicated about RCV. It literally just means you do a series of runoffs all at once. Do you think runoffs are inherently illegitimate or undemocratic?

[Pres Mike]

I did the math. Very rough math that may be wrong.

But in a conventional election, I think Palin wins 51-49%

Can you show your work? Because if you allocate the 11.4k exhausted votes the same way the non-exhausted votes were (37.2% Peltola, 62.8% Palin), it comes out to about 95.4k votes for Peltola and 93.1k votes for Palin.

Sorry for the late reply

In the first round, Peltola got 40.19. Palin got 31.27 and Begich got 28.53 percent.

28.7 of Begich votes put Peltola as their second choice. 50.4 put Palin. 20.9 did not put a second choice.

If we assume Palin won a tradational Republican primary and all the Begich voters who put Peltola as second choice voted for her in the general, that leaves Peltoa with 48% of the vote in the general

My math may be wrong. But Peltola only won because so many Begich voters did not put a second choice, exhausting their ballot

Aren’t you assuming Palin wins all of Begich’s exhausted votes in that scenario? I don’t think that’s a good assumption.

While we can not know for sure what percentage of Begich's exhausted votes would have voted for Palin, I think most would have.

If they wanted Peltola as their second choice, they would have put her as their second choice. Sure, some did not want either Palin or Peltoa. These folks are like the Republicans who would have voted for Kasich or Rubio, but never Trump or Hillary. So basically a group incredibly few in number.

That is frankly lazy and insulting analysis to assume those 20% of exhausted voters would have went to Palin by large enough a margin to overcome Peltola’s 5,000+ vote lead. A little over 10,000 Begich voters abstained, and to win Palin would have needed at least a 75-25 percentage point margin, and I don’t see that happening based on how Peltola kept Palin to a relatively small 50-29 margin among Begich’s 2nd place voters. Peltola almost certainly wins a head to head match up in the normal against Palin if you hold all else constant, like the voter composition and no indie splitting the anti-Palin vote.

Neither me nor you knows exactly how the exhausted Begich votes would have went

They could have followed the 50-29 split like the Begich voters who actually listed a second choice, giving Peltola the win. This is what you suggest.

Alternatively, most would have went to Palin. Perhaps they were Republicans who just didn’t want to list dumbass Palin or a Democrat. Or didn’t fully understand RCV. Or perhaps forgot.

I do not know if it was the former or the latter. I suspect the latter but I am not arguing for that.

Regardless, it was going to end up the closest Alaska race in a generation.

[Progressive Pessimist]

The idea that people are too dumb to understand ranking their preferences is just hilarious to me. Go ask anyone to list their top 5 favorite movies or foods, they won't have a problem.

I disagree, that's actually kind of hard.

BUT to your point, when your choices of how you want to rank a selection is presented in front of you, it's fairly easy.