Close-Up: The Quirks of "Red" Alaska

Alaska, to put it bluntly, is political backwater. Despite a spike in media attention to Alaska during former Gov. Sarah Palin's stint as the Republican nominee for vice president, commentators have given little coverage to elections in Alaska because at least in presidential elections, the result is a foregone conclusion: the Republican presidential nominee carried the state by double-digit margins in every election since 1996. National political campaigns simply don't reach Alaska, and for good reason--while Vice President Richard Nixon was in Alaska making good on his promise of a fifty-state campaign back in 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy was busy campaigning in large swing states like Illinois and New Jersey. Guess who won that one.

Nevertheless, the politics of the Last Frontier are so wildly different from the rest of the country that we don't believe throwing it in the column of "red states" does it justice. A certain late-night live comedy show parodied Gov. Sarah Palin's use of the word "maverick" back in 2008:




But to be fair, the state is pretty "mavericky", for lack of a better word (although there are better words). Most notable is the state's independent streak--in every election since 1984, Alaska has been among the top five states in giving the largest percentage of its votes to third-party candidates. It topped that list in 1984, 1996, and 2012, and in 1992 it gave an impressive 28% of its votes to Ross Perot. Alaskans by far disavow the two major parties in the country: only 27% of Alaskans are registered Republicans and 15% registered Democrats, making Alaska one of only three states where major party members constitute a minority of the electorate. And while the state tends to vote Republican, it has more of a libertarian bent than the conservative one associated with most red states.

What does this mean for Alaska in elections? The conventional wisdom for presidential elections is that it's all about the independent vote (unless you count the late Tim Russert's famous "FLORIDA FLORIDA FLORIDA" signs in 2000), but results and exit polling don't show this. The independent vote tends to have a lot of "leaners" (nominal independents who mostly vote for one major party or the other), and the remaining true independents tend to be less politically engaged and vote at lower rates than registered Democrats or Republicans. And in 2012, Gov. Romney actually won the independent vote by a healthy 5-point margin, but again, you know who won that one.

In Alaska, however, the influence of the independent vote may actually matter a lot more, simply because they constitute a majority of the electorate (53% identified as independents or nonpartisans). It's more likely in Alaska than in any other state that a Democrat with strong independent appeal can overcome the Republican registration advantage. CNN exit polling for Alaska corroborates this: of the 42% of voters who declared themselves to be independent voters, Begich led Sen. Stevens by 13 points.

Another possible factor in Sen. Begich's victory is the lingering strength of organized labor in the state. While union membership nationwide has consistently declined over the past half-century, the large proportion of Alaskan workers in education, utilities and transportation, and government--the three most unionized sectors in the labor force--give the state a massive 22.4% unionization rate, second only to deep-blue New York and far ahead of any other "red" state. Without any foreknowledge, it'd be reasonable to conclude that Democrats should do quite well in Alaska.

Of course, we know this isn't the case. The reason for Republican dominance in the state, despite its large unionization rate, lies in its population distribution, also strikingly similar to New York's. Like New York, the vast majority of Alaska's land area is rural and sparsely populated, with a large percentage of the population concentrated in a single port city in the south. Here's a map of the results of the 2012 presidential election in Alaska, which Obama lost by 14 points:

2012 presidential election in Alaska results by borough and margin. (I would've labeled the boroughs and such, but it's really a pain to figure out how the vote was distributed because the Alaska Division of Elections only compiles them by state legislature district.)

Compare it to Begich's victory in 2008, where he won by just over 1 percentage point:

2008 Alaska Senate election by borough and percent of electorate.

Pretty similar, right? Pres. Obama and Begich both carried the rural north as well as the panhandle in the southeast, while Gov. Romney and Sen. Stevens won the more densely populated south-central area. The difference--but what it a difference it makes--is the city of Anchorage. In the 2012 map, it's a healthy shade of salmon, indicating a Republican victory of about 10 points, but in the 2008 map, it's a very pale blue, signifying the narrowest of Democratic victories. (Begich carried the city by less than a percentage point.) That difference was enough to flip the state--Anchorage accounts for over 40% of the state's votes. Despite Sen. Stevens' victories in the next three most populous boroughs, it wasn't enough to overcome Begich's dominance in the north as well as in the relatively populous boroughs of Juneau and Kodiak.

Begich's victory in Anchorage was actually an anomaly. While Alaska's population distribution mirrors that of New York, they're total opposites in terms of voting patterns--it's the rural north and west that vote Democratic in Alaska, and it's the cities of the south that vote Republican. Anchorage has been ranked as one of the most conservative cities in the country, certainly more conservative than the Big Apple. Although Begich had been elected mayor twice when he was running for the Senate, Democratic mayors are the exception, not the rule. In fact, his victory statewide was weird in itself, as no Democrat before 2008 had ever won a Senate race in Alaska since 1974. There are a bunch of possible reasons Begich managed to win:

• As said before, Begich was mayor of Anchorage--and a popular one at that, winning 55% of the vote in his 2006 re-election. 
• While exit polling is unfortunately not available, we can presume that Begich performed well with labor unions. His voting record in the Senate has been very friendly to unions, reaffirming multiple times the right to collective bargaining. 
• 2008 was just generally a good year for Democrats nationwide. Sen. Obama had very broad coattails and the Republican brand was at a new low.
• Unusually, Begich's opponent was, about a week before Election Day, convicted on not one, not two, but seven separate felony charges. Felons, as you would imagine, tend not to win elections. 

Would Begich have won in 2008 had Sen. Stevens not been embroiled in the corruption charges? After all, Begich's margin of victory still ended up being very slim. Exit polling suggests that it's very likely that the race would have flipped the other way: 41% of voters said that the Stevens corruption trial was the "most important" or a "very important" factor in deciding their votes; 69% of those voters voted for Begich. It's also possible that regardless, voters may have suffered from "Stevens fatigue" after having him in the Senate for almost forty years. "Anyone but Stevens" may well have been the guiding political undercurrent that year. 

What it means for 2014

One thing we do know, however, is that Sen. Begich doesn't have two of those advantages this year. Whether it's former Natural Resources Commissioner Daniel S. Sullivan (not to be confused with current Anchorage mayor Daniel A. Sullivan) or Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell who receives the Republican nomination, neither is a convicted felon (at least, not yet). Additionally, Sen. Begich doesn't have any coattails to ride this time--and Obama's unpopularity in the state makes it unlikely that they'd help him anyway.

What he does have going for him, though, is an economy that has been stronger than that of the whole nation. Unemployment in Alaska has been lower than the nation's as a whole throughout the recession and Obama's term in office. He's still popular with his base of organized labor and has a strong moderate record in the Senate on which to run, which gives him independent appeal in the most independent state in the Union. We don't know how his advantages and disadvantages will pan out in November, but right now we're keeping our rating of the Alaska race as TOSS-UP.