Alaska population down, but voter registration highest in state history

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Alaska’s population decreased by 3,831 people from July 2019 to July 2020, based on population estimates released by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development last week.

It is the fourth straight year of decline for the state’s population, which peaked at 740,637 in July 2016 and was down to 728,903 as of July 2020. 

It’s 0.5 percent year over year, and 11,734 fewer Alaskans in four years, roughly the the population of the City of Wasilla, which is Alaska’s sixth largest city.

At the same time, the Division of Elections reports that 599,704 people are registered to vote in Alaska, which is over 18,000 more than were registered the year prior.

Voter registrations typically fluctuate but have never before reached so close to 600,000. The voter registration total was 581,601 just one year ago.

On the surface, it’s an apparent gain of more than 18,000 voters in one year. Even when the state was at its height of population in 2016, there were no more than 530,653 voters (December, 2016 count).

There’s at least one reason: Voters are being added due to the automatic Permanent Fund dividend application process and it takes years to legally purge people from the voter rolls, due to state law. Voters approved the automatic voter registration in 2016 through Ballot Measure 1.

Every spring, the Division of Elections purges the voter rolls, publishing the pre-purge and the post-purge numbers on its statistics page. That will happen again in February or March. But the voter rolls just keep growing, even while population shrinks. The purging is not able to keep up; federal law governs how voters may be purged.

Comparing Division of Elections data to Department of Labor data, 84 percent of the Anchorage municipality residents are now registered to vote. The remainder, presumably, are children. According to the Census Bureau, 24 percent of Anchorage residents are under the age of 18.

The population loss in Alaska is due largely to net migration — in-migrants minus out-migrants, which accounted for a loss of 8,873 people from July 2019 to July 2020, the Department of Labor said.

That means fewer people are moving to Alaska, rather than that more are leaving. A decrease in births also contributed to the overall decline. 

Alaska’s population from infancy to 64 years old declined 1 percent, while the 65-and-older group actually grew by 4 percent. The state’s oldest borough is Haines, at 48.6 years. The Kusilvak Census Area was youngest at 24.3. 

Twenty-three of Alaska’s 30 boroughs and census areas lost population between 2019 and 2020, for a total of 76 percent of the boroughs and census areas losing population.

The Municipality of Anchorage lost the most (-3,517).

Fairbanks, with its expanding military population, grew the most, gaining 1,064 people, followed the Matanuska-Susitna Borough (523).

Counts from the 2020 Census have not been released and are not part of these estimates, the department noted.

Complete estimates for the state, boroughs/census areas, cities and census-designated places are available here.

18 COMMENTS

  1. I never understood why the need for the PFD voter registration when Alaska had Motor Voter Registration for what, 10 years prior to it? It looked like, and still looks like, a scheme to pad the voter rolls.

      • Amazing, I know of 3 families that left Alaska 2 years ago. Austin Tx, Moscow ID & Boise ID. They have registered to vote in TX & ID and did vote in these states. All 3 families got AK Ballots this year.

        • Same thing for my friend and his wife after they moved to Arizona in 2019 Also they did not request the ballots, so WHO sent them a ballot.

  2. Plainly, this is the result of Left-wing money spent in Alaska last summer to register any person available for ballot harvesting. How many new registrants were dead, had moved, or were fictitious?

    • Higher registration is by design. Stuffing ballot boxes to much that total ballots exceeds the # of registered voters is another inconvenience to the msm tabloid super spreaders and democrats to have to gloss over.
      Happened this go around again. Yet the blinder wearing sheep are keep right where they are needed…… oblivious.

  3. Do any Republicans in Alaska trust the Dominion electronic ballot scanners used in our elections? ………crickets……..
    So why are we using them, when so many other states have outlawed them? ……..crickets……
    Get rid of them!

  4. Voter turn-out for the 2016 and 2020 elections was basically the same at 60% of voters voted in both elections. You can look this info up at Division of Elections website under statistics.

  5. “………Voters are being added due to the automatic Permanent Fund dividend application process and it takes years to legally purge people from the voter rolls, due to state law. Voters approved the automatic voter registration in 2016 through Ballot Measure 1……..”

    Reminds me of an old saying:

    It’s easy to vote yourself into socialism, but you have to shoot our way out.

    Obviously, it’s pretty easy to vote yourself into all kinds of trouble. “Sounded good at the time………..”

  6. The full hand count audit of Ballot Measure #2 confirmed the count of all ballots processed by the Dominion Scanners. Many districts have the same exact count in the audit. The aggregate yes vote decreased 8 votes with 173929 ballots audited. The aggregate no vote increases by 16 votes with 170,183 ballots audited.

    Secondly the Pruitt HD 27 Hand Recount produced a two vote change. One additional ballot was counted for Pruitt and one less ballot was counted for Snyder. Both changes were human decisions not software reinterpretation. Hence Dominion equipment appears to be very precise/proper.

    • You missed the point, Randy. The ballots will match, the question is who filled out the ballots, the actual voter or a operative. Since the judge dropped the witness requirement, the only way to verify the vote is an audit of the actual voter.
      How many of the 113,000 voters who had their data stolen, voted absentee? How many of them had not voted since they were automatically registered? How many of those ballots requested went to different address than the one on their original registration? How many of them lived in the districts won by Republicans on election night that were lost after the absentee ballots were counted?

      • I share some of your concerns. However I was addressing the ‘Dominion scanner issue only’ in the prior reply to questions about Dominion equipment only. More when we talk later.

  7. I’m sure that mysterious little data breach which was discovered on October 27 but occurred who-knows-when had nothing to do with this

  8. Cut the Chase! i will call it. MOST Alaskans are Stupid! The smartest Alaskans couldnt even fill a town’s population past 100. Hahahaha. My Alaskan neighbors i See every day in passing are no more smarter than I, Alaskans are all stupid. An Alaskan college graduate is no different than the Alaskan they look down upon for lack of college and professionals credentials. Very rare do I meet an Alaskan passer-by who actually has to offer some objective factural information the listener knows is straight from objective sources. I am sure there are some Alaskans who are deceived thinking they make that rare 100 smart Alaskans list, while they are no more and no less brighter than the common grocer clerk. Hahahaha

  9. Seeing how many cheaters are there cheating alaskans goes to prove my point Alaskans are stupid. Only stupid people cheat, they dont have any intelligence for winning any other way.

  10. Just over a half million voters total and yet it took us weeks to count the votes after the November election. !!!???

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