Sarah Palin on Wednesday lost the race for the state’s only U.S. House seat to Democrat Mary Peltola, who will succeed the late Rep. Don Young (R) and serve out the four months remaining in his term after his March death.
Peltola, 49, is the first Democrat to win the House race in Alaska since 1973, when Young was elected for the first of what would eventually be 25 times. She is the first Alaska Native to serve in the House, and the first woman to take the seat.
A former state lawmaker, Peltola collected 51.5 percent of the final vote in Alaska’s first statewide election that asked voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Palin, a former Alaska governor who castigated the experiment of ranked-choice voting, came in three percentage points lower, with 48.5 percent of the vote.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
