Mary Peltola Will Make History as the First Alaska Native Member of Congress

glamour.com:

and failed 2008 vice presidential candidate, to take the state’s at-large congressional seat. Peltola’s win will make her the first Alaska Native member of congress, as well as the first woman to represent the state in the House.

It also flips a long-held GOP seat to the Democrats—for now, at least—as the party attempts to buck off expectations of a “red wave” this midterm cycle.This content can also be viewed on the site it from.Peltola’s victory over Palin is the latest instance of the Democrats overperforming in special elections this year; just last week, Pat Ryan triumphed over Marc Molinaro in an upstate New York race that the Republican was initially a slight favorite to win.

Ryan framed his race as a referendum on the GOP’s antiabortion extremism. Mary Peltola made a similar case, tailoring a message of to voters in a state she described as having a “libertarian bent.”“We are very much covetous of our freedoms and our privacy,” she CNN.Still, Democrats shouldn't get too giddy about a blue wave, as there are some important caveats: First, Peltola’s win allows her to finish out what remains of Young’s term. (Young, who was the longest-serving congressional Republican in history, died in March.) That means she’ll have to defend the seat again in the November midterms.

Second, it’s not exactly clear how much an election using the ranked choice voting system Alaskans passed two years ago by ballot initiative can tell us about races that use the typical plurality vote system.