Yesterday, a reporter in Alaska ran into Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski after a speech and asked if if she is planning to vote for Democrat Mary Peltola for Congress. “Yeah I am,” said Murkowski. And, polling shows that Peltola is likely to retain the seat after the ranked choice count is done. She may even win it in the first round, although that would be a big stretch.
As you no doubt know, Peltola won the special election to replace Don Young for a few months and now she’s facing the same two Republicans she beat then, far right extremists Nick Begich III and uniquely unpopular crackpot Sarah Palin. Reporting on the Alaska race for Politico yesterday, David Siders wrote that “Independents— a majority of the Alaska electorate and a critical set of voters to both parties in more competitive states— had pulled away from Palin. In a state that Donald Trump carried by 10 percentage points in 2020, Alaska’s closest approximation to the former president hit a wall. And for the first time in nearly 50 years, Alaska had sent a Democrat to the House. It probably wouldn’t have happened without Alaska’s unusual ranked choice voting system. The state hadn’t turned Democratic overnight, after all. But it was possible that Palin’s loss had revealed something alarming for Republicans about the limitations of a MAGA personality’s appeal in the post-Donald Trump presidential era— not just in Alaska, but in the Lower 48, as well."
Palin and Begich are essentially competing to finish second to Peltola in the first round of voting, only then hoping to leapfrog the Democrat when the second-place votes are tallied. It was only last month that Palin was calling on Begich to drop out of the race, disparaging him as “delusional” for suggesting that he— not Palin— was the only Republican who could win. She described him to me as engaging in “politics of personal destruction.”
...Alaska is not the only state where the politics of personality are being tested in the GOP, and it’s possible that the difficulties Republicans are having here are less an outlier than an early indication of a specific problem for the party in states where Republicans have nominated candidates as polarizing as Palin— and where independents are keeping Democrats afloat.
…[T]he large number of voters who are unaffiliated with either party in Alaska— about 58 percent— may be telling the GOP something about its future in more competitive states, as well. The proportion of people nationally who identify as independent has been growing in recent decades, according to Gallup, now accounting for about 43 percent of American adults. That may not be a problem for Republicans broadly in November.
…Where Republicans do appear vulnerable with independents are places the party is running candidates like Trump, who carried independents by 6 percentage points in 2016, according to exit polls, before losing them to Biden by 13 percentage points four years later. There are a lot of similar hard-liners running this year, including in Alaska, where independents are far more likely to view Peltola favorably than Palin: The Democrat is running 26 percentage points ahead of Palin with independents who rank at least one of them, according to one recent poll.
And in other states where Republicans have nominated Trumpian standard-bearers, it’s a similar story. It’s one reason Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is making a competitive run for Senate in Republican-heavy Ohio, where a Marist Poll last month had Ryan up 2 percentage points over Republican J.D. Vance with independents. In Georgia’s Senate race, Republican Herschel Walker is running 15 percentage points behind Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock among independents, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, while incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, a more traditionalist Republican, is faring far better. In Pennsylvania, Republican Mehmet Oz is down double digits among independents, as well.
Those numbers may shift back toward Republicans as Election Day nears and partisan leanings solidify. But between moderate Republicans defecting from Trumpian Republicans like Palin and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade— just as much an issue in Alaska as anywhere else, with polls suggesting a majority of Alaskans support abortion rights— the most polarizing Republicans, like Palin, have reason for concern.
…[Peltola’s] campaign is resonating. In a recent poll by longtime Alaska pollster Ivan Moore of Alaska Survey Research, Peltola’s favorability rating hit 53 percent. Moore said on Twitter at the time that she “is categorically the most popular figure in AK right now.” Peltola, Moore told me, is “in the midst of a pretty good little honeymoon going on,” while Palin and Begich “haven’t really been very smart between the two of them, just going at each other.”
Peltola has outraised Palin and Begich— combined! As of the September 30 FEC reporting deadline, Peltola had raised $4,163,482 and had $2,265,801 in her campaign account, while Palin had raised 1,550,957, with $194,770 in her account and Begich with $547,466 in his campaign account after raising a total of $1,502,462.
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