Ranked choice voting add wrinkle for GOP in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race

Ranked choice voting has made conservative-leaning Alaska potentially competitive in this year’s Senate race.

Polls show the Republican incumbent, Sen. Dan Sullivan, in a tight race against his main Democratic competitor, former Rep. Mary Peltola.

If additional Republicans or third-party candidates enter the race, it could send the election into a second round of ranked-choice voting, potentially boosting Ms. Peltola.

The Sullivan campaign writes off the early polls because they are funded by Democratic operatives. But Republicans also know that the open primary and ranked choice voting change the calculus for winning in Alaska.

“There are four people, regardless of party, who advance from the open primary to the general election. This certainly creates opportunities for Democrats to meddle and try to prop up other candidates,” said Sullivan campaign spokesman Nate Adams.

To win control of the Senate, Democrats need to flip four GOP seats and defend seats in Michigan, Georgia and New Hampshire. Democrats are targeting the GOP-held seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio.

Alaska’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system was approved by voters in a November 2020 ballot measure, replacing the closed-party primary and head-to-head general election system in 2022.

Since that time, attempts to eliminate it have failed, including in 2024, when Alaskans voted by a 644-vote margin to keep it. Nearly $15 million was spent on the state from outside the state to retain the system, while just $150,000 was raised to repeal it during the last attempt.

A measure to repeal ranked-choice voting will be on the Alaska ballot again this year.

Under Alaska’s current election law, the top four vote-getters in the open primary advance to the general election ballot, where ranked choice voting kicks in. Voters then pick candidates in order of preference. For one candidate to win, they must receive an absolute majority of the first-choice votes.

If no candidate wins more than 50% in the first round, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is removed, and all the votes are redistributed among the other candidates according to their second choices.

This process repeats until a candidate has a majority of the vote.

Democrats recruited Ms. Peltola to take on Mr. Sullivan. She won a ranked-choice special election in 2022 to become the first Democrat since 1972 elected to Alaska’s at-large congressional seat. She held the seat for two terms before losing to a Republican.

Since she entered the race, the Cook Political Report has shifted its rating from solid Republican to lean Republican.

The Sullivan camp says that from a strategy perspective, the campaign was always prepared for the possibility that Ms. Peltola would enter the race. Her name ID and previous time in the House make the race more competitive and more expensive.

Outside Democratic groups have funneled about $4.5 million into the state over the last six months.

For his part, Mr. Sullivan’s campaign raised over $7.3 million with $5.8 million cash on hand.

Although Democrats captured a conservative-leaning at-large House seat through ranked-choice voting in a state that Republican presidents have consistently won, the moment passed in 2024 when Republican Rep. Nick Begich defeated Ms. Peltola.

Mr. Begich told The Washington Times he “is living proof she can be beaten, but ranked choice voting introduces wrinkles into the entire process. and it creates unintended outcomes for the voter, and we saw that in 2022 with an election that had nearly 50 participants in this special House race.”

Mr. Begich, an opponent of ranked-choice voting, said the system creates significant confusion for voters about their optimal strategy.

“Should they rank one person No. 1? Or should they save that vote for their second-place ranking? And should they rank anyone at all? Or should they rank only one person?” he said.

He said ballot exhaustion rates are as high as 60% in some cases, when people simply don’t rank a separate choice.

“Ranked choice voting is built on the premise that everyone will rank and that there will be a broad participatory field, when, in fact, that is not what happens in either case.”

Mr. Begich added, “Some call it ranked choice voting. You can also call it a delayed primary system, because what can often occur is you end up with multiple candidates from the same ideological background fighting over the same voter base.”