Putting AK-AL in context is a little hard given the format. Two GOP candidates got 59% to the lone Dem’s 40% in 1st pref votes. But because more Rs backed the more broadly unpopular candidate, the Dem won in RCV, helped in part by 11k in exhausted R votes. I do see some Rs blaming the system, but 11k voters who had instructions on how to rank-choice vote in front of them chose not to rank Palin second. If you’re blaming the system for 11k exhausted R votes — ~20% of Begich voters! — maybe you think voters are dumb.

Alaska's Division of Elections will start livestreaming the ranked-choice voting process at 8pm EDT tonight. Peltola (D) leads Palin (R) 39.6% to 30.9% based on unofficial 1st-choice votes. Question now is how 2nd-choice votes among the 29.4% of Begich (R) + write-in break. (1/?) The late July poll from Alaska Survey Research found 65% of Begich's votes going for Palin and 31% for Peltola. Begich won 27.8%, so if Palin won 65% of his votes, that would put her at just a hair over 50% before dealing with write-ins. (2/?)

"Neither of these" is not an option on the Virginia ballot, @VCUWilderSchool. So I don't really know what to make of a likely voter poll where only 77% of people have an opinion in late September of an election year. rampages.us/wilderresearch… Also, Princess Blanding is going to be on the ballot, so might as well name her if you're trying to gauge the degree of third-party support. Much more helpful than "neither," even if it inevitably overstates her support.

Some point out the new Georgia election rules could backfire on Rs by motivating Ds. This is right, to a point. But it's bad to hone in on electoral effects at the expense of normative problem of having one party bent on restricting voting rights & falsely claiming rampant fraud. Because the longer one party focuses on restricting voting access, the more concrete that point of view becomes for one of the two major parties, and that could lead to all sorts of problems re: election legitimacy, accepting results, public faith. We're already seeing it.

Tonight, the Virginia GOP’s state central committee voted to hold an “unassembled convention” to choose its 2021 nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. Delegates will vote at up to 37 locations around the commonwealth. thebullelephant.com/scc-votes-for-… This came in the wake of a determination that the party’s initial plan — essentially a parking lot convention assembled at Liberty University — wasn’t feasible. So they changed the party bylaws to allow an unassembled convention and went with that plan.

I looked at our historical polling data from 2016 as of same point 4 years ago & compared Clinton to Biden in our current averages.

National:
Biden +9.1
Clinton +2.1

EVs based on where candidate led by >6.0 or safe for a party (not incl. NE-2/ME-2):
Biden 307
Clinton 198 Right now, Biden and Trump combine for about 92% of the vote. In our historical polling average, Trump and Clinton combined for 82%, with Johnson polling at about 8% at same point. Doesn't look like we'll have to deal with the same kind of 3rd party complication this time around.

Coming into it, I was very curious to see how "The Plot Against America" on @HBO would work out a 1940 presidential election where FDR loses to Charles Lindbergh. So here's a little thread about the election result in Episode 2. (It's not a spoiler to say Lindbergh wins.) First, it's useful to understand that FDR won the real 1940 election 54.7%-44.8% in the popular vote and by a huge margin in the Electoral College against Wendell Willkie (R), who was the opposite of Lindbergh on foreign affairs (i.e. an internationalist, not an isolationist).

Michigan seems pretty do-or-die for Sanders. Big race of the night on 3/10, and if he can't win there, may only win ID and/or WA (neither guaranteed -- Clinton won WA's meaningless primary in 2016 & ID has a closed primary). Biden will win MS, favored in MO. ND = shruggie (1/3) 3/17 looks bad for Sanders if Clinton '16 vote is a guide; he may only be competitive in IL. Biden will win FL big, could be interesting in OH (open) or AZ (closed) but Clinton won both of those by 13+. MI loss might presage an IL loss. (2/3)

Nov. 11 is the 100th anniversary of #WWI's end. As US troops were only directly involved for ~1 year, it pales in comparison to WWII in the American psyche. But WWI was a massive conflict that altered everything & set the stage for WWII. Here's some stuff worth reading/watching: Sometimes, the total black and white and silent nature of so much WWI footage makes it seem incredible foreign to us. So check out "World War One In Color," which came out around the time of the 75th anniversary of the conflict. It's all on YouTube.