This is interesting because it's probably due to exactly how the candidates stack against each other to the respective political groups. I think Condorcet kind

This is interesting because it's probably due to exactly how the candidates stack against each other to the respective political groups. I think Condorcet kind of fails here because people are voting "not Palin" more than they are voting for anyone with their second choice. If there were primaries, Palin beats Begich, not by much, but she does. In which case, the general is Palin and Peltola. Palin is a particularly odious candidate to Democrats. Very few Democrats are going to vote for her. So Peltola will win any general election that's just them two. So Republicans are split among Begich > Peltola > Palin; Palin > Begich > Peltola; and possibly some degree of others. Probably some degree of Begich > Palin > Peltola as well. Democrats are mostly going to be Peltola > Begich > Palin. Because while they would prefer Peltola, they absolutely do not want Palin. Independents are going to independent. So I think that's what we're seeing. Condorcet is showing us results for elections we would never actually see. Palin against just Begich in an election where Democrats can vote just doesn't happen. To address your point about why IRV is seen as more consensus based than FPTP is because FPTP doesn't care about 50%+1. If Alaska was FPTP, then Peltola still wins the election here, because she had the highest vote tally in the initial round. But then she wins with only about 40% of the vote. With IRV, you don't stop until someone gets to 50%+1. I think the biggest problem with Condorcet is simply math. Already, Condorcet is very "set-theory" based. And once you hit an edge case, you all of a sudden get dropped into a whole world of combinatorics. Another issue is that the expectation is that your down ranked choice can't cause your first rank choice to lose. But that's what happens in Condorcet. The people who voted Peltola > Begich > Palin are the ones causing Begich to win even though they prefer Peltola. Every voting method is imperfect when things are split near the middle. And hilariously enough, they're all perfectly fine when most people want something in particular.