Takeaways
- Election reform observers are closely watching races in Alaska since the state transitioned to a system of open primaries and ranked choice general elections—a system designed to produce more competitive races with more options for voters.
- About a dozen candidates, nearly all Republican, have dropped out of their respective races in the 2024 election season, but competition has remained stronger than pre-reform norms.
- Analysis by Sightline comparing candidate slates from the years 2012–2024 shows that both the state legislative races as well as Alaska’s US House race have above-average numbers of candidates in 2024.
- Exiting a race early can be a good call in cases where a candidate has little support coming out of a primary. But by bowing out, a fairly popular candidate could deprive fellow like-minded candidates who stay in the race of a needed boost from second- and third-place votes in Alaska’s ranked choice system.
A spate of candidates in Alaska made headlines for dropping out of November’s general election. This, after running successfully in the state’s nonpartisan open primaries to qualify for the general election ballot. For instance, in August Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom quit the US House race, and State Representative Jesse Sumner left his race for reelection in House District 28. In all, 12 candidates decided not to run1 in the general election despite advancing from the primary.
In Alaska’s system, dropping out of a race is a personal choice made by candidates based on a multitude of factors. The greatest potential effect on voters is to make elections less competitive by shrinking their options on the ballot.
And so, our research for this article focused on whether candidate attrition made Alaska’s 2024 general election less competitive than the state’s previous general elections. The short answer: No, it did not.
The analysis considered the following metrics from the years 2012–2024:
- Average number of candidates in state senate races
- Average number of candidates in state house races
- Incidence of one-candidate races in the legislature
- Number of candidates in the US House race
Sightline found Alaska’s 2024 election races to be either just as or more competitive than they had been in previous election years.
Alaska Legislature
State senate competition peaked in 2022 and fell just slightly in 2024
In the state senate races, the average number of candidates running in the general election peaked in 2022, the debut year of Alaska’s nonpartisan open primaries and ranked choice general elections. Two years later, the 2024 general election marked the second-highest candidate participation rate in the state senate races since 2012. An average of 2.3 candidates are on the ballot in Alaska’s 10 state senate races, despite 5 candidates (4 Republicans2 and 1 affiliated with the Alaskan Independence Party3) dropping out after the primary.
State house competition also peaked in 2022, remained healthy in 2024
Like the state senate, competitiveness in Alaska’s 2024 house races remains on the higher end of the historic norm. In 2024, an average of two candidates are on the ballot in the state house races. That’s down from 2.3 in 2022 and about on par with the 2018 election, when 2.1 candidates on average ran for state house seats. Five candidates (4 Republicans and 1 nonpartisan candidate) dropped out of state house races in 2024.4
2024 has third-lowest number of uncontested legislative races
None of the candidate withdrawals in 2024 resulted in a race switching from contested (meaning two or more candidates participating) to uncontested (meaning just a single candidate on the ballot).5 In terms of uncontested races, 2024 ranked as the third-most competitive election year, as 2022 and 2018 both had fewer one-candidate races.
Typically, there are 50 legislative races in each election, with all 40 state house seats and half of the 20 state senate seats up for reelection every two years. However, there have been exceptions. In 2012 and 2022, mandatory redistricting resulted in 59 legislative seats on the ballot. In 2014, complications related to redistricting put 14 senate districts on the ballot. And in 2020, there was a special election for Senate District M following the death of Senator Chris Birch.
Congress: US House Race Could Have Been More Competitive
In the US House race, the number of candidates remained unchanged at four following Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom’s decision to pull out of the contest, along with another Republican, Matthew Salisbury. The candidates who finished fifth and sixth in the primary, John Wayne Howe and Eric Hafner, simply took their places. Four is the maximum number of candidates who have participated in a US House general election since 2012, so by the numbers, 2024 is a competitive race.
Dahlstrom’s decision did upend the dynamics of the race, though. She was one of two Republicans—the other being Nick Begich—with a reasonable chance of beating Democrat incumbent Mary Peltola. Now the ranked choice race for this US House seat is essentially a two-way race between Peltola and Begich rather than a three-way one between Dahlstrom, Peltola, and Begich. The other two candidates, Howe and Hafner, are unlikely to win, though the contest is potentially close enough that the second-place rankings from their supporters could sway the results.
The Republican Party can’t set the rules for its own partisan primaries anymore, but it can exert its influence in other ways. Convincing candidates to drop out has been one of the more obvious ways the party has done so. Like Dahlstrom, nearly all the candidates who dropped out between Alaska’s primary and general elections were Republicans.
Quitting a race makes sense for unpopular candidates who don’t want to deal with the financial strain and emotional stress of a futile campaign. But for others, dropping out is possibly the wrong strategy. In Dahlstrom’s case, we don’t know how many voters she would have motivated to participate in the election and rank Begich second. Will those voters now sit out the election, depriving Begich of their second-place Republican votes?
The narrative around Republicans dropping out hinges on the fact that Peltola beat both Begich and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, also a Republican, in 2022. Many Republicans believe that having fewer Republicans running will give them a win this time around.
But consider a different argument: Republicans lost the US House race in 2022 because the party and its candidates sent mixed messages to Republican voters and made each other look bad instead of joining forces. First Palin urged her supporters to ignore the option to rank. Then she changed course and encouraged them to “rank the red” (meaning rank all Republicans). Begich, for his part, criticized ranked choice voting, while also telling voters to “rank the red.” In addition, Begich and Palin were attacking each other on the campaign trail, making them both distasteful to voters who might have ranked one first and the other second. In the end, enough voters who opted for Begich first either didn’t rank a second-place candidate or chose Peltola second, costing Republicans Alaska’s lone US House seat.
Candidates, political operatives, and donors might consider the long game. Rather than dropping out, candidates could have stayed in the general election and accumulated more political experience and name recognition, thereby deepening the bench for Republicans. It’s possible they had supporters willing to vote only for them who will now stay home. And perhaps those supporters would have been willing to help a fellow Republican by ranking them second. How many of these low-hanging votes were left on the tree?
Candidates have more freedom to enter and exit politics
Before Alaska’s election reforms took effect in 2022, political parties winnowed down the field of general election candidates through the semi-closed primary system. Today, candidates can go before all voters in a primary and have the freedom to make the call themselves about whether to drop out.
The dozen candidates who ran and then left their races in 2024 still deserve kudos for having made the attempt. They built up their name recognition and gained more experience in running for office, which is important when building the bench for all parties and political groups over the long term. They also gave voters more options to consider, at least briefly. And despite their leaving the race, the 2024 general election has remained one of Alaska’s most competitive general elections in more than a decade.
