According to a preliminary ballot count on Sunday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is leading a group of 48 candidates in a special primary election for the only seat in the state congress.
The four best candidates in the race will run in the snap elections in August. Ms. Palin has nearly 30 percent of the vote so far; Nick Begic, a descendant of an Alaskan political dynasty, has 19.3 percent; Al Gross, a surgeon and commercial fisherman who ran for the Senate two years ago, has nearly 12.5 percent; and Mary S. Peltola, a former U.S. lawmaker, has about 7.5 percent.
Ms. Palin and Mr. Begic are Republicans, Mr. Gross is not affiliated with the party, and Ms. Peltola is a Democrat.
The special election was sparked by the March death of Representative Don Young, a Republican who was first elected to the House in 1973. The election is to fill the remainder of Mr Young’s current term.
The special election will be held on August 16, which is also the day of the Alaska primary competition for the mandate of the House of Representatives 2023-2025. Thus, voters will see the names of some candidates twice on a ballot paper: once to decide the outcome of a special election and once to select candidates for the autumn general election for a full two-year term.
For Ms. Palin, the race is a political comeback. As Senator John McCain’s candidate in the 2008 presidential race, Ms. Palin lost a Democratic ticket involving Joseph R. Biden Jr., and she resigned from the governor’s office in an attempt to use her newly opened profile. work as a well-paid political expert. Ms. Palin became involved in a similar anti-establishment, anti-news media streak of the Republican Party, which later spurred the unexpected rise of Donald J. Trump in the White House in 2016
The results announced on Sunday are preliminary and may change over the next few weeks as more ballots are processed and counted.
Alaska is a sparsely populated state with two U.S. senators but only one in the House. This small population is spread over an area larger than Texas, California and Montana combined, with about 82 percent of the state’s communities inaccessible by road.
Counting the ballots there can be a challenge.
Every voter in the state received the ballot by mail, starting April 27, and the ballots were due to be returned on Saturday. At least three more rounds of preliminary results will be announced by government officials before the results are certified in about two weeks.
Alice McFadden contributed to the report.
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