a Ballotpedia survey<\/a> named Ron Paul as the politician he most looked up to. While Bye’s presence on the general election ballot would give him increased visibility to voters, he would need to significantly increase his primary showing to have an effect on anything but the closest of races if his second- and third-choice voters become part of the final tally.<\/p>\nA similar situation occurred in the special election primary in June, when Democrat Al Gross surprisingly dropped out after finishing third. The Division of Elections rejected Sweeney’s attempt as the fifth-place finisher to be included in the final special election vote because Gross withdrew within 64 days of the election.<\/p>\n
Sweeney’s withdrawal on Tuesday comes 77 days before the November general election, so whoever finishes fifth when all primary votes are counted will advance to the general election, said Tiffany Montemayor, public relations manager for the Division of Elections.<\/p>\n
The updated vote totals and Sweeney’s withdrawal both have implications that could be decisive in what so far is a tight race.<\/p>\n
Peltola may be the biggest beneficiary, since the Democrat’s primary vote of 35.16% percent is 3% less than her special election vote, while Begich’s 26.81% is less than 2% below his special election tally. Palin so far has 31.14% of the primary vote, only slightly down from the special election results.<\/p>\n
In additional updates for the primary elections, incumbent U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski at 44.18% continues to maintain almost exactly her initial lead over fellow Republican Kelly Tshibaka at 39.81%. Democrat Pat Chesbro continues to linger far behind her polling numbers at 6.18% and virtually unknown Republican Buzz Kelley — who Tshibaka says benefited from her “Vote for Kelly” signs — is solidifying his distant fourth-place among the remaining 16 candidates at 2.2%.<\/p>\n
The governor’s race continues to be dominated by Republican incumbent Mike Dunleavy who has 41.76%, with independent Bill Walker at 22.11% and Democrat Les Gara at 21.94% continuing to swap places in a dead-heat battle for second place. Republican Charlie Pierce appears safely positioned in fourth place with 6.83%, well ahead of the remaining six candidates.<\/p>\n
In the Alaska State Legislature races the results remain essentially the same for the 59 of 60 House and Senate seats in practical terms since nearly all have four or fewer candidates, including Juneau’s three seats. But four candidates trailing far behind so far have dropped out since election night, including independent Shevaun Meggitt in Ketchikan who has less than 4% of the vote, compared to independent incumbent Rep. Dan Ortiz with 51% and Republican challenger Jeremy Bynum with 45%.<\/p>\n
A multitude of endorsements have occurred since last Tuesday’s elections, the most notable local one coming this Tuesday from Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon who along with other Southeast Alaska leaders gave their official backing to Murkowski. Notable among other local endorsements is Sealaska Corp. backing Peltola, Walker and Murkowski.<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Updated count shows Sarah Palin solidifying chances of ultimately prevailing in U.S. House race <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":868,"featured_media":90482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[809,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-90481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-election-2022","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90481"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=90481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}