Why candidates are withdrawing from Alaska’s general election

The November ballot is set in Alaska. Monday was the deadline to withdraw from the general election, and 11 candidates dropped out. Many said they exited the race to help build support around stronger candidates of the same political party. The number of dropouts combined with a near-record low turnout is leading some to question the need for an open primary leading up to the ranked choice voting election. 

James Brooks covers state government for the Alaska Beacon. He says it took a few days after primary results came in for the general election to start to take shape. 

Listen:

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

James Brooks: So we saw a lot of candidates withdraw after seeing the results of the primary. In most of the cases, it was Republicans quitting, either legislative races or U.S. House races, in order to consolidate support around one or two Republicans in a few cases.

Wesley Early: And what have you heard from candidates as to why they dropped out of the race despite making it to the general ballot? I imagine that having more conservatives in the race would benefit conservatives. 

JB: Yeah. Ordinarily, Alaska’s ranked choice voting system means that there’s no penalty if you have multiple candidates from the same party running in the race. Theoretically, voters could rank another Republican after their first Republican, and it would just go on from there. There wouldn’t be any drop off. But what we saw two years ago was that a healthy number of Republicans declined to rank multiple candidates. They just picked one candidate, and that was it. If that candidate was eliminated from the race, those votes didn’t transfer to the other Republican in the race, and that ended up hurting that other Republican. And so rather than try and convince Republican voters to rank multiple candidates, a lot of Republicans have taken the approach that they need to withdraw from the race in order to consolidate support behind only one Republican. That if there’s only one Republican in the race, there’s no chance that you would have what’s called exhausted ballots, where the person that people have voted for is eliminated and it doesn’t transfer to the next Republican. 

WE: You know, we’re talking a lot about conservative candidates. Are we seeing anything for more moderate or left-of-center candidates? 

JB: Very little. There’s only one case in Anchorage from a progressive candidate, Nick Moe, who trailed in the primary, decided the odds weren’t looking good for him, and he decided to withdraw. But he had a paperwork problem, and his withdrawal didn’t process. So he’s still on the ballot, but he suspended his campaign and has endorsed his opponent. 

WE: So the turnout for the primary seemed very low. Can you talk about how it compared to past years? 

JB: Right. I looked back at the past 50 years’ worth of primary elections, and this is the third lowest in the past 50 years. And I know that with the repeal of ranked choice voting being on the ballot, some proponents of the repeal are saying, “Well, this is the fault of the new election system. That’s why people didn’t turn out.” But when I look back at the past 50 years, the commonality seems to be what I call a boring ballot. There’s only, in terms of statewide races, the U.S. House race on this ballot. There’s no statewide ballot measures. There were no Senate races or no governor’s race, and that seemed to correspond with low turnout in the primary, 

WE: There’s going to be a presidential ballot on the general election this year. Do you think that that’s going to change that turnout, and maybe we’ll get different results than the primary showed?

JB: I do. Back in 2000, which is the lowest year on record, that year, like this one, had no statewide races, no ballot measures, except for the U.S. House race, and that turnout was on the order of 15-17%, much lower than the 18-19% that we saw this year. And then it turned around, and 60% of registered Alaska voters turned out in 2000. 

WE: There was a recent op-ed from the ADN editorial board questioning the need for a jungle primary. They described it as a sort of unofficial state-sponsored poll. How would you say that the primary is setting the stage for the general election? 

JB: Well, I like to think of it as a tundra primary, instead of a jungle primary, because it’s wide open, you know. Down in the Lower 48 they might call it a jungle primary, but it doesn’t make much sense here. So I like to use the term that Nat Herz came up with. 

But I do think that the primary still makes sense, because if you look down at what happens in places where there is no primary, where you have a ton of candidates piled into the general election… I mean, imagine if you were asked to rank 12 or 13 U.S. House candidates. I think you would see a lot of people dropping off and not ranking all of those candidates. In San Francisco, where they don’t have that primary for city elections but use ranked choice voting, there are a lot of candidates for city office, and the rankings really drop off. People don’t fill out their ballot completely because it’s just too big. And the primary serves that purpose of winnowing down candidates, and whether that’s through the actual voting or candidates withdrawing, I think it’s hard to argue that the primary isn’t serving a purpose.

WE: And as we look ahead to the general election and the primary’s over with all the dropouts, what do you think are the races that are going to demand the most attention this year?

JB: I think there’s a fair number of races in the state House, in addition to the U.S. House, that are going to be important to watch, because control of the state House, if you remember, is pretty closely divided, and whoever controls the state House controls what happens in terms of legislation, in terms of what bills are passed. And so it’s a real open question to me whether the House will be controlled by a multi-partisan majority, with Democrats, Republicans and Independents, or if it’ll stay predominantly Republican-controlled, and that’ll make a big difference over the next two years.