Turnout, ballot splitting and a blue Anchorage: 3 takeaways from Alaska’s election results

Alaska’s election has entered its final stage, after ballot counting concluded Wednesday.

The results aren’t finalized until a state review board completes its work, which is set to occur by the end of the month. But a close look at the 340,510 ballots counted so far reveals new information about the way Alaskans cast their ballots.

Here are three takeaways.

Voter turnout varied significantly across the state

Turnout rates varied wildly by district in this year’s election. In House District 9, covering South Anchorage, turnout surpassed 72% of registered voters. In House District 40, covering the North Slope and Northwest Arctic, only 36% of registered voters cast their ballots.

Areas with a turnout below 45% also included House Districts 37, 38 and 39, where Alaska Native people make up a majority of voters. Turnout was also below 45% in House Districts 18, 19 and 22 — areas of North and East Anchorage where immigrant communities make up a large portion of the population.

Election observers have previously said low turnout in rural Alaska and in North and East Anchorage could be due, in part, to a lack of accommodations for voters who speak languages other than English, among other factors.

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The federal government has repeatedly found the state to be violating the Voting Rights Act by failing to provide polling place accommodations for Alaska Native language speakers in rural parts of the state. Federal observers were sent to several polling places across Alaska for the November election, though their findings are not yet available.

In 2022, several civil rights groups sued the state after thousands of ballots were thrown out due to errors in absentee ballots — predominantly from districts with a high percentage of households where English is not the primary language, including rural regions of Alaska and several neighborhoods in Anchorage. The court case remains open.

Also, areas with high turnout included districts with easy access to early voting. Turnout exceeded 65% in both Juneau and Homer — where early voting locations were conveniently located. In two districts covering Eagle River, which also had its own early voting location, turnout exceeded 62%.

Overall, more than 340,000 ballots were cast in the election, the second-highest number in the state’s history, after 2020, when the state set a record of 361,400 ballots. This year’s overall turnout hovered just under 56%.

Ticket splitting is alive and well

Alaskans again showed a strong propensity for split-ticket voting.

Alaska has voted for a Democratic candidate for president just once, in 1964 for Lyndon B. Johnson. The state again overwhelmingly voted for Republican Donald Trump, this time by more than 13 points — a bigger margin than he received in the 2020 presidential election, but smaller than in 2016, when Trump won Alaska’s three electoral votes by an almost 15% margin.

Though Republican Nick Begich III defeated Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola in the race for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat, Begich underperformed Trump in every single district.

The difference was most significant in districts where Alaska Native voters make up a majority. In House District 40, which covers the North Slope and Northwest Arctic, Trump won with 50% of the vote. Peltola won the district with 55%.

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Overall, Trump received almost 25,000 more votes than Begich across Alaska. Peltola proved more popular than Vice President Kamala Harris, garnering almost 13,000 more votes than Harris, the Democratic candidate for president.

Alaska’s legislative results were also mixed. The number of Republicans elected to the Legislature is roughly equal to the combined number of Democrats and independents.

Twenty-one Republicans and 19 Democrats and independents won election to the 40-seat Alaska House. Eleven Republicans and nine Democrats are set to serve in the 20-seat state Senate.

Several of the Republicans elected to the Legislature have embraced a bipartisan approach — breaking with the hyper-partisanship favored by Trump and many members of Congress. Two Alaska House Republicans indicated the day after the Nov. 5 election that they preferred caucusing with Democrats over joining a caucus with other House Republicans. Several Senate Republicans again indicated they would caucus with Democrats, as they have since 2022.

Voters in several Republican-leaning districts split their tickets, and backed moderates in key legislative races. One Eagle River House district voted 64% for Trump, and voted for moderate GOP Sen. Kelly Merrick by 5.4% of first-choice votes over conservative Republican challenger Jared Goecker. One Fairbanks Senate district was won by Democratic incumbent Sen. Scott Kawasaki even as Trump carried its presidential contest.

Alaskans also showed a progressive lean in votes for ballot measures. Voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to boost the state’s minimum wage and guarantee sick leave for the first time with 58% support. Alaska was one of three Republican-leaning states to approve initiatives this year to guarantee sick leave for workers.

Voters in 31 of 40 House districts supported the minimum wage increase initiative. Voters in conservative strongholds on the Kenai Peninsula and in Mat-Su and Fairbanks opposed the measure.

Meanwhile, an initiative to repeal ranked choice voting and open primaries narrowly failed, even after conservatives and the Alaska Republican Party had backed the repeal effort.

Voters in 24 of 40 House districts voted to retain the election system. Support for the repeal effort was strongest in conservative parts of the state.

Anchorage is blue

In the presidential contest, Harris received more votes than Trump across the Municipality of Anchorage, even as Trump carried the state as a whole. The city also went blue in 2020, when President Joe Biden received more votes than Trump did within the municipality’s boundary.

For decades before 2020, Anchorage was a reliably red city, choosing the Republican presidential nominee by a significant margin in election after election. In 2016, the first time Trump was on the ballot, he beat Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by several points.

Some parts of the city, including Eagle River and some neighborhoods in South Anchorage, favored Trump. But overall, Harris had more than a one-point lead over Trump in the city.

The blue shift is also reflected in the city’s elected state legislators. Of the city’s 16 Alaska House members, six are set to be Republicans, including one Republican, South Anchorage’s Chuck Kopp, who has announced his intentions to caucus with Democrats. The remaining 10 are Democrats or independents.

Five of the city’s eight state senators are Democrats. The three Republicans have all caucused with Democrats for the past two years.