Alaska Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka would defeat Sen. Lisa Murkowski if the election were held today, a new poll shows. The survey, conducted by the respected firm Cygnal for the Tshibaka campaign, uses Alaska’s new ranked choice voting system and demonstrates that Tshibaka would beat Murkowski in the final tabulation by nearly two points, 50.8% to 49.2%.
“With only modest investments in advertising by her campaign in 2021, Kelly Tshibaka has tripled her name identification over the last year and positioned herself to be the next U.S. Senator from Alaska,” pollster Brock McCleary wrote in a memo to the Tshibaka campaign. “Based on the strength of her grassroots popularity, Tshibaka has united the center-right of the Alaska electorate in rejection of incumbent Lisa Murkowski’s re-election bid.”
Since voters will rank four candidates in the November general election, the poll included Tshibaka, Murkowski, a generic Democrat, and a generic Libertarian candidate. Using the ranked choice process, the poll eliminated the candidate who finished fourth in the initial vote and redistributed those votes based on voters’ second-ranked choices. The process continued until one candidate reached 50 percent plus one vote.
https://www.kellyforak.com/post/tshibaka-leads-murkowski-in-new-poll
