Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin leads the field of 48 candidates in a special primary election for the only seat in the state Congress, according to a preliminary count of ballots on Sunday.
The top four candidates in the race will run in the August special election. Mrs. Palin has nearly 30 percent of the votes counted so far; Nick Begich, a descendant of an Alaska political dynasty, has 19.3 percent; Al Gross, a commercial surgeon and fisherman who ran in the Senate two years ago, has nearly 12.5 percent; and Mary S. Peltola, a former state lawmaker, has about 7.5 percent.
Mrs. Palin and Mr. Begich are Republicans, Mr. Gross is not affiliated with any party, and Mrs. Peltola is a Democrat.
The special election was motivated by the death in March of Rep. Don Young, a Republican who was first elected to the House in 1973. The election is to fill the remainder of Mr. Young.
The special election will be held on August 16, which is also the day of Alaska’s primary competition for the 2023-2025 seat in the House. Thus, voters will see the names of some candidates twice in a ballot: one to decide the outcome of the special election and another to choose candidates in the fall general election for the full two-year term.
For Mrs. Palin, the race is a political return. As a voting companion for Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential race, Ms. Palin lost to a Democratic ticket that included Joseph R. Biden Jr., and resigned from the governor’s office, trying to turn his new profile into a well-paid job. political expert. Ms. Palin had taken advantage of a similar Republican Party anti-establishment and anti-news media vein that later galvanized Donald J. Trump’s unexpected rise in the White House in 2016.
The results announced on Sunday are preliminary and could change over the next few weeks as more ballots are processed and counted.
Alaska is a sparsely populated state, with two U.S. senators but only one representative in the House. This small population is spread over an area that is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined, with about 82 percent of the state’s communities inaccessible by road.
Counting ballots there can be a challenge.
Each voter in the state received a ballot in the mail, beginning April 27, and the ballots were due back on Saturday. State officials will announce at least three more rounds of preliminary results before the results are certified in about two weeks.
Alyce McFadden contributed to the report.