This is a good start. The other advantage of ranked choice voting is that it makes real 3rd parties viable. No more choosing the lesser of two evils.

Depends on the voting system used to count the ranked choice votes, I think. With STV it's fine to cast a protest vote for a third party that has no chance. But once it's not clear who the final two are, strategic voting is important again.

For example, I think it's likely that if 1.6% of the Alaska at-large voters had voted Begich-Palin rather than Palin-Begich, that Begich would be Representative-elect rather than Peltola. (I don't know if there's public data to confirm this, though there would in San Francisco.)

The difference in 1st choice for Palin vs Begich was 3.1%, so shifting 1.6% of the voters would cause the needed 3.2% swing and (making some assumptions about write ins, since they didn't see a chart with write in transfers separate) make the final round Begich vs. Peltola.