Can Democrats win Alaska again? Our Ranked Choice Voting Model Crunches the Odds

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America

By Logan Phillips

Date: August 20th

Few states in the nation have shifted more towards Democrats in the last decade than Alaska, but their rejection of Sarah Palin in favor of Democrat Mary Peltola still stunned the nation. It was the exclamation point in a summer of surprising successes for Democrats in special elections, one that was made possible as much by the party's new-found strength post-Roe as by Alaska voters' misgivings about the former Governor. Now, Democrats will have to win once again in November for Peltola to secure a full two-year term - no easy task in a state that still has an R+15% lean.

We have designed a special ranked-choice election model just for Alaska, modeled after our successful NYC Mayor Forecast. There will be four candidates - Democratic Congresswomen Mary Peltola, former Governor Republican Sarah Palin, Republican Nick Begich, and Libertarian Chris Bye. Voters will rank the candidates in order of preference. Once the vote count is completed, the candidate placing fourth is automatically eliminated, and their votes are rerouted to the candidate that those voters ranked second on their ballot. If neither candidate has over 50% of the vote, the same process is repeated for the third-place candidate.

For the first round, we estimate the vote share of each candidate by using five factors - Polling (most important), vote share in the special election, Fundraising, Experience, and the frequency Alaskans are searching each candidate on google over the last 7 days.