As I recently described, last Sunday my lovely wife and I drove to Wasilla to one of the county’s early polling places to collect our votes. While it would have been more convenient to vote at our little community center just up the road than driving to Wasilla, let me never say that I am not listening to the urgings of our readers and many of you who had encouraged me to add my voice to the vote Save comments.
We waited in line for about 90 minutes to cast our votes and left feeling good. Not only had we fulfilled our civic duty, but the murmurs of conversation I heard about the leanings of our fellow voters were encouraging.
So that’s done. And it It turns out we have a lot of company.
The Division of Elections reports that over 6,000 Alaska residents voted on Thursday, the fourth day of early voting, bringing the total to over 26,200 early voters between Monday and Thursday. Voters said they waited in line for more than an hour in Anchorage.
Additionally, 20,596 mail-in ballots were returned and received by the department as of Oct. 25.
The combined early and postal votes totaled nearly 47,000 as of Thursday.
If you live in New York or California, that doesn’t seem like a lot of voters. But Alaska, with a population of about 733,000, has just a little more of it 572,000 registered voters. That’s about five percent of registered voters who have already cast their votes. Geographically we are a vast state but population wise we are a petite state.
We are also a Republican state when it comes to voter registration – and that Early voting turnout reflects this as well as.
Republican registered voters in Alaska still outnumber the majority, making up nearly 37% of all early in-person voters so far, while Democratic registered voters are at 14%.
Republicans also did better when it came to mail-in ballots returned and received, at 30%; 23% of all ballots were returned by Democrats. Over 10% of Alaska voters have requested an absentee ballot.
Alaska has only 75,066 registered Democrats and 146,000 registered Republicans. The rest of the voters either belong to smaller parties or, more commonly, do not belong to any party. Since Democrats make up 12% of voters, they are doing well with their mail-in voting results. Republicans make up 24% of the total electorate, easily outnumbering them.
Alaska will almost certainly send the state’s three electoral votes to Donald Trump and JD Vance; The last time the Great Land went for a Democrat was in 1964. And what indicators we need to examine tell us that Republican Nick Begich III good chance sending Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola back to Bethel, which is another seat the GOP really needs to maintain control of the House.
But what about repealing ranked choice voting? That’s another story. There are no really good surveys on this topic. Republicans here in the Great Land (including yours truly) blame ranked choice voting in no petite part for Mary Peltola winning her election to the House and Lisa Murkowski’s continued representation in the Senate. Under the ancient system, Kelli Tshibaka would almost certainly have beaten Murkowski in a Republican primary, and it is not at all likely that Princess Lisa could have repeated her earlier victory.
As for that – the RCV repeal – I’m afraid we’ll have to wait until November 5th. If then.
See related: Panic Time: Longtime Nevada Early Vote Analyst Announces Code Red for Kamala Harris
Republican optimism is rising in Nevada as early voting trends favor Trump and Sam Brown
WIN: Trump could be “President on Election Day” if early voter numbers hold
Given the increasingly likely assumption that Donald Trump will win his second term, he needs a warm House of Representatives. If the early signs mean anything, we Alaskans are all doing our best to hold up our end of the bargain.
