The Long Goodbye

This is the funniest, more bizarre graphic I saw for election results.  Nothing even comes close in second place.

As you likely recall, Alaska now uses a "ranked" voting system.  You rank candidates by preference, and until someone gets 50% of the votes, the person in last place is dropped and their votes are re-distributed according to who voters' next choice was for that candidate.  

Once again, as in the Special Election a couple months ago, the main candidates were the now-incumbent Mary Peltola, Sarah Palin and Mark Begich.  There's also a Libertarian candidate.  And it was a Libertarian who finished a very-distant last place in the first round and will be dropped.

Wanting to find out what had happened overnight in the race, since Alaska is three hours behind the West Coast, I tracked down an article this morning I skimmed the first three paragraphs and then scrolled down to the graphic that put it all in clear, quick context. And this is the graphic I came across this morning from the Anchorage Daily News that showed where things currently stood -- and I thought it was very weird, somewhat snarky, but funny how they said "So long" to the last-place Libertarian candidate.