Democrat Mary Peltola Defeats Sarah Palin For Alaska House Seat

Democrat Mary Peltola‘s win in a special election on Tuesday night will make her the first Alaska native to serve in Congress.

She beat out former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) and Nick Begich (R) to complete Rep. Don Young‘s (R) term, which ends in January. Young died in March after representing Alaska in Congress for nearly 50 years.

By Wednesday night, with 93% of the votes accounted for, Peltola had 51.1% of the vote to Palin’s 48.5%.

Alaska ran a ranked-choice voting system for the first time. It requires a candidate to receive at least 50 percent of the vote for the special election. If no one does, the candidate with the least amount of votes withdraws their candidacy and that person’s voter’s to their second choice until one candidate has over 50%.

Palin responded to the new voting system in a statement posted to Twitter.

“Though we’re disappointed in this outcome, Alaskans know I’m the last one who’ll ever retreat,” it read. “Instead, I’m going to reload. With optimism that Alaskans learn from this voting system mistake and correct it in the next election, let’s work even harder to send an America First conservative to Washington in November. It’s the only way to clean up the mess that Joe Biden and the radical democrats have made of things.”

Peltola now looks ahead to the November midterms where she’s running for a full term to represent Alaska in the House. Ranked choice voting will be used again to determine the winner of the November election.

“Yesterday we celebrated, but today the work begins again,” Peltola wrote on Twitter following her win. “We’re still facing a difficult race in November, but I know that the coalition we’ve built and the momentum we have is enough to make sure we have a fighting chance.”

“Let’s make it happen,” she added.