Alaska’s 2022 general election saw a modest turnout of voters: Just 266,573 of Alaska’s 601,795 registered voters cast ballots, a 44.30% turnout.
Although Alaska’s voter rolls are oversubscribed, the final participation number for this year still ends up with 95,000 fewer ballots than were voted two years ago in the general election.
In the 2020 election, there was a presidency at stake, which typically brings out more voters. Some 361,400 of the then-595,647 registered Alaska voters cast ballots, or 60.67%. Also that year, the Division of Elections mailed ballots out to all Alaska senior citizen voters to help them avoid going to a polling place where they might contract Covid, a virus that has proven particularly hazardous to their age group.
The mailed-out ballots in 2020 may account, in part, for why 26% fewer voters participated in the election this year. Ballots were not automatically mailed; voters had to request absentee ballots, as they had before the Covid pandemic.
Rolling back to the last midterm election in 2018, Alaska had a nearly 50% turnout. About 285,000 voters cast ballots out of the 571,851 registered voters.
This year’s turnout was 6% smaller than in 2018 in actual numbers.
Were some voters turned off by the ranked-choice method, by the candidates, or by the general nastiness of politics in these times? In a state that has removed nearly all barriers to voting, with automatic registration now the law with Permanent Fund dividend applications and drivers license registration, and with early voting available three weeks prior to election day, voting has never been easier.
Yet, in a “no excuse” state, the turnout hasn’t blossomed either in raw numbers or percentage of registered voters.
In 2022, voters cast the most votes in the governor’s race: 263,296 voters chose a candidate in that contest. Mike Dunleavy and Nancy Dahlstrom received 132,392 votes, or 50.28% of the votes cast in the governor’s race. They won outright, without having to go through the ranked-choice voting machine.
Congresswoman Mary Peltola was the next top vote getter on Nov. 8. In the first round of counting (before candidates were eliminated and votes redistributed), Peltola received 128,329 votes.
Peltola’s voters (those who ranked her first) were far fewer than those who voted for Congressman Don Young in 2020, when he won with 192,126 total votes, over 50%. The final number for Peltola — with ranked-choice voting calculated — was 136,893, or 55% of the votes cast.
Even with adding in the second and third choices of voters who did not pick Peltola first, but who ranked her, she came up 55,233 votes short of what Congressman Young received in his final election.
But Peltola did better in every single House districts than presidential candidate Joe Biden did two years ago. Peltola, a Democrat, did 6% better this year in the Mat-Su Valley than Biden did in 2020. She also did 6% better than Biden did in Fairbanks North Star Borough and Ketchikan. In Juneau, Peltola did 8% better than Biden did two years ago. In Anchorage, she did 8% better than Biden.
The lowest turnout in the state this year was Senate Seat A in Southeast, (Sen. Bert Stedman), with a 30% turnout; Senate P in Fairbanks, (Sen.Scott Kawasaki) with a 33% turnout, followed by Senate Seat S in the Bethel area (Sen. Lyman Hoffman). Only 34.18% of voters in that district voted.
Highest turnout in the state was Anchorage’s Senate Seat E, (Sen.-elect Cathy Giessel), 55.06%, followed by Juneau’s Senate Seat B (Sen. Jesse Kiehl) 51.53%, and Eagle River’s Senate Seat L (Sen.-elect Kelly Merrick), 50.39%.
On Tuesday, Nov. 29, the 2022 election is set to be certified by the Division of Elections.
