Domenico Montanaro

And the fact that that happened, I think a lot of people look at, yes, her name was Murkowski.

People knew her, knew her dad.

That name has been around for a long time in Alaska.

But I think that it signifies how important candidates matter in

So to be able to win or be able to compete in those places, you need candidates who match the profile of the state very uniquely.

Well, and, you know, midterm election year is really an activist election.

I mean, there are lower turnout events generally.

So the people who are most, uh, wanting to go out and vote and, and if this, um, repeal measure gains a huge, uh, following among conservatives, which it, it already has some, um, if that drives voters to the polls, you're going to, you wind up with this sort of two ended thing where yes, you have ranked choice voting.

Yes.

You wind up with more, um,

you know, moderate candidates for the most part across the country.

But you're going to wind up in a midterm year, have sort of the most activist parts of the bases be the most fired up to want to go vote.

Democrats want to flip this seat.

Republicans want to be able to repeal ranked choice.

Yeah, it's pretty unlikely that repeal wins and Peltola wins.

But if that were something that were to happen, you could chalk it up as one of the weirder outcomes of 2026.

Thank you.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

This is a president who really believes in domination, not collaboration.

And it turns out that talking badly about allies over a long period of time, not making a moral case before getting into the Iran war and not having leverage might mean that people aren't going to go along with what you want.