Analysis: Begich would still beat Hill in a final round, though the race has tightened

Republican Rep. Nick Begich would beat nonpartisan Bill Hill in a ranked-choice final round with about 52.5% of the vote, an Alaska News analysis of the ballots counted so far shows.

But Hill has led among early and absentee ballots, and about 40,000 ballots are still uncounted.

Begich has 48.8% of first-choice votes in the Division of Elections' latest report, released Tuesday evening. Hill, a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and retired educator, has 40.9%. Democrat Eric Hafner has 7.5%, and Libertarian Jim McDermott has 2.7%.

Hill has won about 49% of the early and absentee votes counted so far, to Begich's 42%. Begich won 52% of Election Day votes, to Hill's 37%.

Hafner, the only registered Democrat in the race, is serving a federal prison sentence in New York and has no apparent ties to Alaska, The Associated Press reported last month. The Alaska Democratic Party endorsed Hill.

Tuesday night, the division also posted an updated ballot-level file. It records how each ballot was marked, without identifying voters, and covers most but not all of the ballots counted so far. In it, 94% of the ballots that ranked Hafner first ranked Democrat Mary Peltola first for Senate, and 92% ranked Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins first for governor, about the same as ballots that ranked Hill first. About one in seven ballots that ranked Peltola first for Senate ranked Hafner first for the House.

Ballots that ranked Hafner first were more likely to list backup choices than those that ranked the front-runners first. About 45% of them marked no other choice, compared with nearly 60% of those that ranked Hill first and more than three-quarters of those that ranked Begich first. Most of Hafner's ballots that did list a second choice picked Hill. Across the file, about two-thirds of House ballots marked just one candidate, and about 1 in 10 ranked all four.

Alaska News ran the ranked-choice rounds on that file and applied its rankings to the full preliminary count, the same method it used in its earlier analyses of the Senate and governor's races. McDermott, in last place, would be eliminated after write-ins. His ballots would split almost evenly: about 28% would move to Begich, 28% to Hill and 12% to Hafner, and about a third would stop counting.

That would leave Begich with about 50% of the votes still counting. Because no candidate won a majority of first choices, the count would continue until two candidates remain, under state law.

Hafner would be eliminated next. About 45% of the ballots that ranked him first would end up with Hill and 6% with Begich, and the rest would stop counting. On the current count, that would give Begich about 52.5% in the final round against Hill, a lead of about 11,700 votes. Alaska News' first analysis, on Nov. 4, put him at about 53%.

That is not a final result. About 40,000 ballots the division has accepted aren't in the results yet, by Alaska News' count from the division's ballot reports. Absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day can still arrive through Friday from inside the U.S. and through Nov. 18 from overseas.

By Alaska News' math, Begich would need about 57% of the votes still to be counted to clear 50% outright, with no ranked-choice count. He has won about 40% of the absentee votes counted so far.

If he falls short of 50%, the count would go to ranked-choice rounds and end in a final round against Hill. Hill would finish ahead in that round only if Begich won less than about 32% of the votes still to be counted. That's lower than Begich's share of the absentee, early or Election Day votes counted so far. The mark ranges from about 30% to 35%, depending on whether 35,000 or 50,000 ballots remain.

If the uncounted ballots split like the early and absentee ballots counted so far, Begich would lead that final round by roughly 7,000 to 8,500 votes. Alaska News also split them district by district. In that scenario, he would lead by about 6,300. It assumes each state House district's uncounted ballots split like its counted ballots of the same kind, with questioned ballots split like Election Day votes. Those are scenarios, not a forecast.

The ballot-level file doesn't include ballots counted only by hand, the division says. That leaves out the Election Day ballots from 116 mostly rural precincts, whose voters favored Hill on first choices. The file covers 235,561 of the 245,470 ballots cast in the House race. Applying its rankings to the full count assumes the voters missing from it ranked the candidates the same way.

The ranked-choice count for races without a majority is scheduled for Nov. 18. Two years ago, Begich won the seat in a ranked-choice count. He had 48.4% of first-choice votes and finished with 51.2% after Hafner and Alaskan Independence Party candidate John Wayne Howe were eliminated.