Three Republicans and one Democrat are running on two of Alaska‘s general election ballots after the second Democrat in each race dropped their bids following the state’s open primaries, elevating a third Republican to each race.
In the state’s gubernatorial election, the top primary vote-getter, Democratic former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, is taking on three Republicans: conservative activist Bernadette Wilson, former Anchorage mayor Dave Bronson, and former state attorney general Treg Taylor. Taylor was elevated to the general election ballot after the previous fourth general candidate, Democrat Tom Begich, dropped his bid to endorse Kreiss-Tomkins and unite the Democratic vote.
In the state’s Senate race, the top primary vote-getter, Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola, is facing off against three Republicans: incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-AK), former U.S. Forest Service employee Dan J. Sullivan Jr., and former U.S. House candidate Gerald Heikes. Heikes was brought up to the general election ballot after Democrat David Leslie dropped from the general election and left Peltola as the only Democrat.
Both Begich and Leslie dropped from their respective races before the Aug. 31 deadline, allowing the next-in-line vote-getter from the primary to elevate to the general election ballot. If they had dropped afterward, their names would still have remained on the ballot.
On the surface, this ratio split clearly does not present the best odds for Republicans, as the Democratic party-line vote is hypothetically consolidated under one candidate while Republicans have three choices. However, Alaska is a ranked choice voting state, meaning the traditional spoiler effect of additional candidates is, in theory, supposed to be avoided.
“Because of the way ranked choice voting works, it shouldn’t make much of an impact at all,” Glenn Wright, political science professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, told the Washington Examiner.
But some Alaskans, particularly GOP pundits, are arguing the split gives a major advantage to Democrats. Here’s the breakdown.
What if Alaskans don’t fill out their full ballots?
Wright told the Washington Examiner that, given the ranked choice voting elimination and redistribution process, the three-to-one Republican-to-Democrat ratio should not have a spoiler effect on GOP chances.
In ranked choice voting, the candidate with the fewest votes in the general election gets eliminated in the first round, and the voters who ranked that candidate first have their votes redistributed in favor of the candidate they ranked second. That process repeats until one candidate reaches a majority.
“Generally, the fact that we’ve added another Republican, it really doesn’t split the vote. I mean, that’s actually one of the impacts of ranked choice voting is that you don’t get this spoiler effect when you’ve got a third, or in this case, a fourth candidate,” Wright said.
However, with the way Alaska’s ranked choice voting works, voters are not required to fill out their full ballot, meaning individual voters can “bullet vote” and just support one or a few candidates, while other voters rank all the slots. Republican pundits worry that if too many voters bullet vote, it will hurt the GOP’s chances of winning the election.
“You’re going to have people who vote for whichever their favorite Republican is, and they’re not going to vote for a second or third,” Alaska Republican strategist and consultant Arthur Hackney told the Washington Examiner.
If voters only rank one candidate and their candidate gets eliminated in the first round of ballot counting, their votes will not get redistributed in the subsequent rounds.
“The numbers don’t add up. I mean, it’s just this simple. It massively benefits the Democrat,” Hackney said.
However, Hackney opined that the circumstances in the gubernatorial race are different than those of the Senate race, given, in part, that Sen. Sullivan is running as an incumbent, while the governor’s race is an open election with no incumbent. The Senate race has also garnered more national attention. President Donald Trump has weighed in on the Senate race with an endorsement for incumbent Sen. Sullivan, but he has not endorsed in the governor’s race.
“Everybody is now campaigning for one Democrat, and bunches of people are lining up behind one of three Republicans, and then you’ve got to expect that they’re all somehow going to rank the other ones,” Hackney added, pointing to another potential impact of the ballot split.
Is there a fundraising and campaigning advantage?
Both Hackney and Wright addressed another possible benefit to Democrats for having one candidate on the ballots while Republicans have three. They each pointed to the fact that under one candidate, the Democratic Party’s fundraising resources, campaigning resources, and party-line vote are, in all likelihood, consolidated under one candidate, while the three Republicans are splitting their party’s funding and campaigning manpower and resources.
“The one thing that may be a tangible way in which having three candidates, because we have this new election system, could negatively affect those candidates is just because then the campaign funding that might otherwise get funneled to a single candidate is distributed between these three candidates,” Wright told the Washington Examiner.
“That money thing is a real thing,” Wright continued.
Hackney also discussed the possibility of a resource split, specifically in the governor’s race where there is no incumbent or clear establishment favorite candidate. Outgoing Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R-AK) has not endorsed any candidate in the race to be his successor.
“When you get down to it, at the end, it’s how you turn people out,” Hackney said. “Anybody can win an election if you turn people out, and it’s hard work to do.”
The fate of ranked choice voting is in the voters’ hands
This year, Alaskan voters will have a say in whether ranked choice voting stays in the Last Frontier State.
Alaska’s ballot measure two on the November ballot asks voters whether they want to repeal the ranked choice voting system, which it first instituted in 2022.
The system is meant to give voters more options, and proponents say it has the effect of sending less extreme candidates on both sides of the aisle to the general election, due to the open primary system.
“It does increase options for voters. Voters have a broader range of ideologies and personalities that they can vote for,” Wright said.
National Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), have flooded the state advocating against the ranked choice system this election cycle, urging Alaskans to vote “yes” to repeal the voting system. They argue that it is “unfair and confusing.”
“Something is amiss in Alaska. We have got to get rid of ranked choice voting. It’s unfair. It’s confusing. We need free and fair elections,” Johnson said while campaigning with Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK), who is vying for reelection.
Republicans have seen ranked choice voting as a disadvantage after Mary Peltola won her special election and regular election in 2022 on the ranked choice voting system.
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However, Wright, who says he is a fan of the voting system, argues he believes Alaskans “can handle it.”
“If you think ranked choice voting is confusing, wait till I introduce you to the Electoral College,” Wright said. “We’re not strangers to confusing election systems in the United States.”