Republicans look increasingly likely to flip Alaska's at-large House seat
Late last night, Alaska reported updated tallies of its vote count, and the news was good for Republicans — at least when it came to the race for the state's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. With 90% of the expected vote reporting, Republican Nick Begich III leads Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola by a little more than 3 percentage points, 49.1% to 45.8%. Although this represents a slight improvement for Peltola relative to where she stood right after Election Day (about a 4-point deficit), there simply aren't many votes left to be counted.
Now, Alaska uses ranked-choice voting if no candidate has a majority of first-choice votes, so it's worth mentioning the third- and fourth-place contenders: In third with 3.9% is John Wayne Howe of the secessionist and conservative Alaskan Independence Party, and in fourth with 1.0% is Democrat Eric Hafner, a perennial candidate.
At this point, Begich is so close to the magic 50%-plus-1-vote mark that it's difficult to imagine him losing. In fact, a 538 analysis of Alaska's Cast Vote Record suggests Begich's edge could expand once ranked-choice voting is taken into account. The CVR contains the votes and ranking of all scanned ballots, and while the state still needs to tally some votes, the math of incomplete CVR data is as follows: Once the secondary choices of voters who initially picked Hafner or Howe are added to the first-choice votes for Begich and Peltola, Begich leads about 52% to 48%. Assuming it works out this way, Peltola's defeat would mark the fourth for a Democratic House incumbent this cycle, and would put the GOP on course to likely win at least 221 seats (the party's total entering the election) based on where the other undecided races stand.