With Democrat Mary Peltola winning last week’s special U.S. House election in Alaska to finish the term of the late Republican Congressman Don Young, the state’s half-term Republican governor and reality TeeVee personality Sarah Palin is calling on fellow Republican candidate Nick Begich to withdraw from the race, CBS News reports.
In Alaska’s new rank-choice voting system, Palin was running second to Peltola in the special election when the final round of voting was calculated. The voters whose first choice was Begich had their second-ranked votes counted, but it was not enough for Palin to overtake Peltola. More than 11,000 Begich voters didn’t select a second-choice candidate, a margin more than enough to cover Peltola’s roughly 5,300 vote margin of victory.
So instead of trying to convince voters that she’s the best candidate–or in this case, even the second-best–Palin wants her Republican rival to drop out so she can–wait… what? Palin would lose again if the same percentage of people didn’t support her? Really? So her whole, “Nick Begach shouldn’t run because he’s costing me votes” thing is BS, because the voters still would not vote for her.