As I’ve described recently, last Sunday my dear wife and I drove to Wasilla to one of the Borough’s early voting locations to bank our votes. It would have been more convenient, true, to vote in our little community center just up the road than to make the drive to Wasilla, but never let it be said that I don’t listen to the urging of our readers and many of you had encouraged me to bank my vote in the comments.
We waited in line for about 90 minutes to cast our votes and left feeling good; not only had we done our civic duty, but the murmured conversations I heard about our fellow voters’ proclivities were encouraging, too.
So that’s done. And it turns out we have a lot of company.
The Division of Elections reports over 6,000 Alaskans voted on Thursday, the fourth day of early voting, for a total of over 26,200 early voters between Monday and Thursday. Voters reported standing in line for more than an hour in Anchorage.
Also, 20,596 absentee ballots have been mailed back and received by the Division through Oct. 25.
Combined early and absentee votes are nearly 47,000 as of Thursday.
That may not seem like a lot of voters if you live in New York or California. But Alaska, with a population of 733,000 or so, has only a little over 572,000 registered voters. That’s about five percent of registered voters who have already cast ballots. We’re a big state geographically but a small state population-wise.
We are also, as far as voter registration goes, a Republican state – and the turnout in early voting reflects that as well.
Alaska’s Republican-registered voters are still crushing it, making up nearly 37% of all early in-person voters so far, while Democrat-registered voters are at 14%.
In the absentee ballots returned and received, Republicans have outperformed as well at 30%; Democrats are at 23% of all ballots returned. Over 10% of Alaska voters have requested an absentee ballot.
Alaska has just 75,066 registered Democrats and 146,000 registered Republicans. The rest of the voters are either with minor parties or, more commonly, not with any party. With Democrats representing 12% of the voter roll, they are doing well with their absentee ballot returns. Republicans represent 24% of the overall voter roll, so are slightly outperforming their numbers.
Alaska is almost certainly going to send the state’s three electoral votes to Donald Trump and JD Vance; the last time the Great Land broke for a Democrat was in 1964. And what indicators we have to examine, tell us that Republican Nick Begich III has a good chance of sending Democrat Congresswoman Mary Peltola back to Bethel, which is one more seat that the GOP really needs to keep control of the House of Representatives.
But what of the repeal of ranked-choice voting? That’s another story. There’s no really good polling on the matter. Republicans here in the Great Land (including yours truly) blame ranked-choice voting in no small part for Mary Peltola’s winning her election for the House and Lisa Murkowski’s continued presence in the Senate. In the old system, Kelli Tshibaka would have almost certainly beaten Murkowski in a Republican primary, and it’s not at all likely that Princess Lisa could have repeated her earlier write-in victory.
For that matter – the RCV repeal – I’m afraid we’ll have to wait until November 5th. If then.
See Related: Panic Time: Long-Time Nevada Early Vote Analyst Announces Code Red for Kamala Harris
Republican Optimism Soars in Nevada As Early Voting Trends Favor Trump and Sam Brown
WINNING: Trump Could Be ‘President on Election Day’ If Early Voting Numbers Hold Up
Assuming, as looks increasingly likely, that Donald Trump wins his second term, he’ll need a friendly House of Representatives. If early indications mean anything, all of us Alaskans are giving it our best shot to uphold our end of the deal.
