No.
Many of Ron Begich’s voters would not have voted for Palin and a significant number of his voters would have voted for Pelota. The results would have been the same.
As for him being a spoiler, how? 17k of his voters CHOSE Pelota as their second choice. 11K didn’t care who was second.
There was something wrong with the Palin candidacy.
> There was something wrong with the Palin candidacy.
Im not sure we can draw any conclusions other than “Palin didn’t win”. There’s too many shenanigans possible, so great uncertainty when analyzing causes.
IMHO ranked choice should be eliminated, because it provides another dimension of inexplicable phenomena.