{"id":1629935,"date":"2022-09-01T16:32:40","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T20:32:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1629935"},"modified":"2022-09-01T16:32:56","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T20:32:56","slug":"sarah-palin-should-blame-lisa-murkowski-for-her-special-election-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/sarah-palin-should-blame-lisa-murkowski-for-her-special-election-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Palin Should Blame Lisa Murkowski For Her Special Election Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsarah-palin-should-blame-lisa-murkowski-for-her-special-election-loss%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1629935&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Last night, Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Republican firebrand and former governor Sarah Palin in Alaska\u2019s special election for its vacant House seat. Palin should have won. But it was Alaska\u2019s first time using ranked-choice voting in an election, and that spelled the Trump-backed candidate\u2019s doom.<\/p>\n<p>For those unfamiliar with ranked-choice voting, here\u2019s a primer: if a candidate does not receive a majority \u2014 i.e., more than 50 percent \u2014 of first-place votes, ballots are retabulated, the lowest-vote getter is eliminated, and their votes go to voters\u2019 second choice. This process continues until a candidate clears 50 percent of the vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the first round of voting, Peltola\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fairvote.org\/alaska_rcv_analysis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">won<\/a>\u00a040.2 percent of first choice preferences, followed by Palin\u2019s 31.1 percent, and Republican Nick Begich III\u2019s 28.5 percent. This means 59.6 percent of voters initially cast their ballot for Republican candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After Begich was eliminated in the second round of tabulation and his votes reallocated, 50 percent of Begich voters ranked Palin as their second choice; with 29 percent crossing party lines to vote for Mary Peltola. 21 percent of his voters chose not to rank a second choice, a phenomenon otherwise known as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thefga.org\/paper\/ranked-choice-voting-a-disaster-in-disguise\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ballot exhaustion<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With more than one-fifth of Begich\u2019s voters declining to rank a second candidate, Peltola was given the boost she needed to secure her 3-point victory (51.5 percent of the final vote tally) over Palin (48.5 percent).<\/p>\n<p>In a state Trump won by 10 points in 2020, Palin should have been a shoo-in. Peltola will be the first Democrat to hold Alaska\u2019s lone congressional seat since the early 1970s, despite nearly 60 percent of Alaska voters casting their ballots for a Republican.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Palin\u2019s loss and such extreme voter disenfranchisement can be attributed to Alaska\u2019s adoption of ranked-choice voting, an electoral system Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was instrumental in pushing through.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-11113241\/Hidden-video-reveals-Murkowskis-campaign-worked-pass-ranked-choice-voting-Alaska.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Project Veritas<\/a>, Murkowski staffers worked to change Alaska\u2019s primary into a ranked-choice voting system so as to ensure Murkowski would defeat Trump-endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. And it worked. After Alaska voters approved Ballot Measure 2 \u2014 an initiative that established ranked-choice voting and discarded multiple party primaries \u2014\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2022\/08\/16\/us\/elections\/results-alaska-us-senate.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Murkowski beat Tshibaka<\/a>\u00a0in the Senate primary. If not for Ballot Measure 2, Tshibaka would\u2019ve likely defeated Murkowski in a traditional partisan primary. Come November, Murkowski will likely beat Tshibaka again \u2014 all thanks to her efforts to enshrine ranked-choice voting into law.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In effect, Murkowski just botched her own party\u2019s showing in Alaska. By pushing ranked-choice voting to ensure her own survival \u2014 and evade Republican voters\u2019 ire due to her\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2021\/02\/13\/lisa-murkowski-impeachment-vote-fallout-469007\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">impeachment vote<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 she disenfranchised thousands of Alaskans and cost Palin her congressional seat. Peltola is only heading to Congress because she picked up nearly 30 percent of Begich\u2019s votes. Under a traditional first-past-the-post system (through which most U.S. House races are decided), this would not have happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While Peltola, Palin, and Begich will face off again in the regularly scheduled general election for the same U.S. House seat this November, it\u2019s likely the outcome will be the same \u2014 all thanks to Murkowski.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Republican firebrand and former governor Sarah Palin in Alaska\u2019s special election for its vacant House seat. Palin should have won. But it was Alaska\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1130,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1629935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1629935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1629935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1629935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1629935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}