We’re still days away from knowing who won key midterm races in Alaska. Elections officials are planning to release more votes Monday and Tuesday as the high-profile statewide races for Congress and governor remain uncalled.
In the meantime, though, there’s plenty of data to sift through.
The Division of Elections released a large file known as the “cast vote record” early Wednesday morning with data from the roughly 204,000 ballots that have been scanned so far.
It’s an incomplete sample of the overall vote. The version released Wednesday does not include ballots from rural and remote precincts that count their Election Day votes by hand, nor does it include what’s expected to be tens of thousands of remaining early and absentee votes set to be counted next week.
That means it’s difficult to extrapolate election outcomes — newly counted votes could have a significant impact on who ultimately wins each race.
But the data, despite its limitations, has some interesting stories within it. Here are a few.
Sen. Dan Sullivan’s same-name challenger got most of his support from left-leaning Alaskans
There’s a strong overlap in support for Peltola and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. of Petersburg. Nearly 30,000 Peltola voters ranked him second. By contrast only about 3,000 of Sen. Dan Sullivan’s voters ranked him second.
Ahead of the election, Republicans, including President Trump, accused the second Sullivan of running to confuse Alaskans and draw votes away from the senator and bolster Peltola’s chances. A New York Times investigation found Democrats were involved in efforts to recruit the Petersburg Sullivan, though the Peltola campaign denies involvement.
In fact, there are signs of “a small amount of confusion” in the ballot data, said Charles Stewart, a political science professor who directs the MIT Election Lab. Only about 16% of his voters ranked the senator second.
But about twice as many voted for only the Petersburg Sullivan. And a little over a quarter of Petersburg Sullivan’s supporters ranked Peltola second, suggesting some voters saw the two as allied “co-partisans,” Stewart said.
“Mostly, it looks like supporters for Dan Sullivan Jr. (of Petersburg) are protest voters, one way or the other,” Stewart said. “Just unable to give a first ranking to the Democrat, or unwilling to give a vote to any of the candidates, but nonetheless wanting to express an opinion about the election.”
Some 70 voters — 0.03% of the ballots scanned so far — attempted to rank both Dan Sullivans first. Those are invalid “overvotes” and will not be counted.
Republicans’ ‘rank the red’ message broke through, but it may not be enough
With three Republicans facing a single Democrat in the governor’s race, GOP candidates urged their voters to rank all three in hopes of overcoming Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.
In the 204,000 ballots scanned so far, a little more than half — roughly 103,000 — ranked a Republican first.
Of those, about half — 56% — ranked all three candidates. About a third picked one candidate and didn’t rank any others.
Wilson voters were the most likely to rank all three Republicans in the governor’s race — 59% of Wilson-first voters ranked all three, versus 51% of Bronson voters and 52% of Taylor voters.
That’s evidence that voters listen when candidates tell them to rank, said Burke Croft, who works with data at the progressive consulting firm Ship Creek Group. How big a difference it can make for candidates, though, remains in question.
“We don't know the upper and lower bounds of that quite yet,” Croft said.
The Associated Press has yet to call the race, but at least so far, Republican voters are not ranking in sufficient numbers to beat Kreiss-Tomkins.
Voters rank in unpredictable ways
Because each ballot is represented in the cast vote record, it’s possible to take a fine-grained look at individual voters’ ballots. (The file doesn’t identify voters — the Alaska Constitution, like all state constitutions, guarantees a secret ballot.)
Most voters follow familiar patterns. It would make sense for a voter who ranked Republican Gerald Heikes, a conservative longshot candidate boosted by Democratic groups, to rank Sen. Sullivan second. And about half of Heikes voters ranked the senator on their ballots.
But some didn’t follow partisan logic. One voter in Willow ranked Heikes first, Peltola second and the senator third.
Ranked choice repeal supporters were more likely to rank in the governor’s race
One interesting feature of the cast vote record is that it allows comparisons across races because each data point represents an individual ballot. That makes it possible to compare results across races.
And there’s an interesting trend in the data on voters who favored a repeal of ranked choice voting, open primaries and certain campaign finance rules. In the governor’s race, 58% of repeal supporters ranked three or more candidates, versus 22% of voters who favored keeping ranked choice voting in place.
There’s an easy way to read that, though: repeal supporters overwhelmingly ranked a Republican first in the governor’s race, and there were two other Republicans in the race to rank.
