What Went Down In Alaska And Wyoming’s Elections

The live blog crew will log on at 9 a.m. Eastern to talk through the results we do have in Alaska, but to quickly run down what happened before then:

• With 67 percent of the vote in Alaska’s Senate primary, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, former Alaska Department of Administration Commissioner Kelly Tshibaka and Democrat Patricia Chesbro are all projected to advance to the November election. The fourth candidate is yet to be determined at this point. (Remember: All candidates in Alaska now run on the same primary ballot, regardless of party and the top four candidates advance to the general election, which will be conducted using ranked-choice voting.) And per Nathaniel who stayed up late last night to watch the results trickle in: “These numbers are bullish for Murkowski, IMO. Murkowski currently leads Tshibaka by 4 points. Many if not most of the ballots yet to count are absentee votes, which in Alaska can arrive up to 10 days after election day (as long as they are postmarked on time). Since 2020, absentee voters, of course, have tended to be more liberal, so I’d expect Murkowski to gain even more ground from here on out. That could put her right on the cusp of 50 percent, a threshold she should be able to reach once Chesbro is eliminated in the ranked-choice-voting general election.”
• Meanwhile, in Alaska’s at-large congressional district there was both a special election and a regularly scheduled primary. In the primary, Democratic former state Rep. Mary Peltola, former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, Republican businessman Nick Begich III and Republican former Assistant Secretary of the Interior Tara Sweeney are projected per ABC News to advance to the general election. All four of these candidates also attracted the most votes in the special election where 68 percent of the expected vote is in. Peltola is in the lead with 35 percent of the vote, followed by Palin with 31 percent, Begich with 27 percent and Sweeney with four percent; however, the winner will be determined via ranked-choice voting, the results of which we won’t know until Aug. 31. (Overseas absentee ballots aren’t due until Aug. 31 and the ranked-choice tabulations can take place only once every ballot has been received and processed.) As Nathaniel noted: “With only a few points separating Palin and Begich for second place, that’ll be a really important race to watch as more votes are counted in the coming days. If Palin finishes third, she’ll be eliminated and her support will probably overwhelmingly go to Begich, likely leading to his election. But if Begich finishes third, his support will probably split more evenly between Palin and Peltola, possibly pushing Peltola over 50 percent if she is close enough.” Nathaniel also expects Peltola’s vote count to grow for the same reasons we expect Murkowski’s numbers to tick up.
• Finally, in the governors primary, the last key race we were watching in Alaska, 67 percent of the expected vote is in and current Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy is in a strong position. He has 42 percent of the vote while his closest opponents Democratic former state Rep. Les Gara and independent former Gov. Bill Walker have 22 percent each. Dunleavy is close-ish to hitting 50 percent in the primary, which we said in our preview of the race would be a good sign that he’ll be able to build the support he needs to win the general election. No incumbent Alaska governor has won reelection since 1998, but it looks as if Dunleavy will be able to pull this off, especially if the opposition against him remains split.