How Election Week 2022 Went Down

As a reminder, Alaska runs elections a little differently from the other 49 states. Four candidates appear on the ballot for each race, and voters are asked to rank them in order of preference — essentially, “Who’s your first choice? Who’s your second choice?” and so on. The votes you’ll see tonight are only first-place votes, but they alone won’t determine the winner. If no one gets a majority of first-place votes, ranked-choice voting will determine the winner. On Nov. 23, once all ballots are tabulated, the candidate with the fewest first-place votes in each race will be eliminated, and his or her supporters will be redistributed to their second choices. That process will repeat until someone has achieved a majority.

It looks like women will break their record for simultaneous governorships (which is currently nine). Republican women are projected winners in South Dakota, Alabama, Arkansas and Iowa. And Democratic women are projected winners in New York, Kansas, Massachusetts, Maine and New Mexico. That makes nine. And with all women races in Oregon and Arizona, that will put women over the top.

Paroma, a lot of those flips so far can be explained by redistricting. Florida’s 7th and 13th districts were redrawn to be reliably Republican; same with Tennessee’s 5th. In addition, New Jersey’s 7th District got a few points redder in order to shore up Democratic incumbents in neighboring districts. And Ohio’s 1st District went from slightly more Republican-leaning than the nation as a whole to slightly more Democratic-leaning.