Enlarge image
Happy election winner: Democrat Mary Peltola
Photo: Marc Lester/AP
The victory for Sarah Palin was almost certain - but then the US Democrats in the state of Alaska brought in a surprising victory.
Democrat Mary Peltola defeated former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in the race for a congressional seat, the Alaska election commissioner said.
Peltola received 51.5 percent of the votes, Palin around 48.5 percent.
The seat had previously been in Republican hands for decades.
The seat had been vacated by the death of longtime Republican Congressman Don Young, leading to the unscheduled election.
The vote had already taken place in mid-August.
Because no one achieved an absolute majority in the count on election day, the outcome of the election was only clarified with a delay.
Alaska has only one seat in the US House of Representatives.
Enlarge image
Defeated Republican Sarah Palin
Photo: Bill Roth/AP
However, the seat will be reassigned in the forthcoming congressional elections in November.
Then the entire House of Representatives will be re-elected, as will a third of the seats in the other chamber of Congress, the Senate.
Then Palin has another chance.
Some importance was nevertheless attached to the special vote just a few months earlier.
The result is a bitter disappointment for Palin, who served as Alaska's governor from 2006 to 2009 and who gained some notoriety as a one-time icon of the radically conservative and populist Tea Party movement.
Palin was surprisingly made his running mate in 2008 by Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
The Christian-conservative outsider and the experienced senator lost to the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his then vice-candidate Joe Biden.
Palin resigned as governor of Alaska in 2009.
Palin is far more prominent than the nationally unknown Peltola, and in Republican Alaska Palin actually seemed to have the advantage.
After a long break, the Republican wanted to make her political comeback in the vote.
That didn't work, at least not on the first try.
Peltola and Palin will both run again in the November election.
Palin's defeat is also a defeat for former US President Donald Trump - he supported her in the election campaign.
mrc/dpa/AFP