Primary Election Day Tomorrow in Alaska and Prediction Markets

 Hard to believe it's finally here.  We didn't get any campaign literature in the mail today!!!

Probably the most uncertainty centers around the Governor's race.  There are lots of known candidates.  Which of the Republicans will end up in the top four?  And will other Republicans drop out in the belief that being on the ballot could siphon off votes from the top Republican and help the top Democrat.  Will the second Democrat, if there is one, also drop out?  

Ranked Choice Tabulation Questions

Given that we have Ranked Choice Voting, voters can rank all four candidates - first choice, second choice, third choice, fourth choice. If a candidate gets 50%+1 vote in the first round that candidate wins.   If no one gets over 50%, the candidate with the fewest first place votes is dropped and that candidate's second place votes are distributed to the other candidates.

DOE_Tabulation_60sec_HULU.mp4  Link to the video explaining how they count ranked choice voting from the Division of Elections.  Couldn't find a way to embed the video here.  [I did look, and it can be done, but I didn't find instructions I could use.)

I have questions about tabulating the votes, but tomorrow is election day and I'm not going to try to get answers from the Division of Elections until after the election. 

The video doesn't explain how, if ever, the third and fourth choice votes would count.  Perhaps if someone's choice for a second place vote has already been eliminated, the third place vote would count.  (I couldn't find anything that actually says that.)  And with only four candidates in the general, I don't think you would ever get to the fourth choice vote.  

Also, what if someone got no first place votes, but was the second place choice for all the other candidates?  That person would be eliminated on the first round and would never get the second place votes.  It's not a likely scenario, but something like that could happen.  

Ranked Choice Strategy Questions

In 2022, Sarah Palin and Nick Begich split the Republican vote in the general and enough second place votes gave Peltola the win.  

In 2024, two Republicans pulled out of the general, presumably because they didn't want to do the same thing, and Nick Begich beat Peltola.  But that year Trump was also on the ballot and that brought out lots of Republican voters.  (Total votes for US House:  2024 = 329,493;  2022=263,610) 

Ranked Choice Voting is supposed to overcome this sort of problem by giving voters the option to make second and third choice votes.  But not enough voters have done that.  Will they learn to do that in the future?  Are there good strategic reasons not to rank?  What are they?  Will there be candidates who urge their voters to choose Candidate B as their second choice?

The Spoiler Candidates and the Spoiler PAC Campaigns

My previous post was about Outside [Alaska lingo for outside of Alaska] PACs spending lots of money on fringe candidates - one from Arizona, one from South Dakota, and one Alaskan - in an attempt to get them onto the final four in the general.  

One of those candidates - Richard Grayson - has said he would withdraw if he were in the final four.  Today Grayson emailed me a link to a review of what the prediction markets are saying about the Alaska US Senate race.  There's a lot more discussion at the link, but here's the gist:

That's hard to read 

That was too small, and now it's too big, but the chart is in the link.  I've also looked at the Kalshi page on this race and it's clear I need to learn a lot more about prediction markets and what everything means.  I do suspect that a lot of people who are betting are not from Alaska and don't really know that much about our elections.  But I don't really know.  

The prediction markets didn't do that well in Michigan and Wisconsin.

In comparison, on June 23, 2026  I wrote:

"At this point, I''d guess that Peltola, Sen. Sullivan, and Kohlhaas* would be the top three, scooping up most of the votes.  As I look at the 2024 House race, the others won't get many votes.  Though I suspect Dustin Darden has run often enough that people will vote for him because they recognize his name.  And Daniel J. probably has a good chance to get votes too, for the very reasons the Sen. Sullivan campaign and the Republican Party of Alaska and the National Party want him off the ticket.  It would be between him and Darden for fourth place.  

Given that early polls show Peltola ahead of Sen. Sullivan, having Daniel J. on the November ballot would be a threat to Sen. Sullivan's reelection.  If Daniel J. made it to the general election, and there he pulled 5% of the vote from the Senator, it could easily be enough to give Peltola the victory.  Some might say that Peltola's ahead now, so she'd win either way.  I think that's counting your chicks before the eggs are laid.  

[*I'd mentioned Kohlhaas in an earlier paragraph as another candidate (Alaska Libertarian Party) who had run often enough that people knew his name."]

Tomorrow evening, and surely by Wednesday, we'll know.   

[This post has more of a deadline than most, so I'm going to post now without proofing as much as I normally would.  If I find typos etc., I'll fix them.  I won't change content, but if I do, like always,  I'll make it clear what I did.]