I totally agree with you that in a standard FPTP election, Palin would have beaten Begich in a Republican primary, and then lost in the final election, and we w

I totally agree with you that in a standard FPTP election, Palin would have beaten Begich in a Republican primary, and then lost in the final election, and we would have had the same result. I don't think IRV did worse than the system it replaced here. But they both failed in the same way. There are non-FPTP, non-IRV election methods that would have correctly picked the Condorcet winner, Begich.