Alaska
Governors race
| 42.34 | BPI |
|---|---|
| 42.34 | Poll avg. |
| Candidate | Predicted Vote % | Win Prob. |
|---|---|---|
| Les Gara | 42.3% | 15% |
| Mike Dunleavy | 57.7% | 85% |
About Alaska
Alaska is a state in the North Western region of the United States. It has been a state for about 63 years now, has a population of around 736,000, and the median income is $77.8k. Around half of the population lives in the Anchorage metropolitan area, which has almost ten times the population of the next largest Alaskan city, Fairbanks. It has the highest proportional indigenous population, at around 15%, with the rest being almost entirely White. While per capita income in Alaska is one of the highest in the country, it has an equally high cost of living due to it's remote nature. It's economy depends heavily on natural resource extraction, particularly oil, coal, silver, and zinc. Almost 85% of the state budget is supplied by oil revenue. It also has large tourism, logging, and fishing sectors, as well as being greatly supported by the US military bases in the region. Alaska has been republican leaning since the 1970's.
Candidates
Les Gara (D)
Source: ballotpedia
Mike Dunleavy (R)
Source: ballotpedia
Les Gara, a former member of the Alaska House of Representatives for District 20, is running for Governor of Alaska. Gara was actually born in New York, and did law school at Harvard Law School. Gara grew up in a foster home after his father was killed in an armed robbery. Gara is a mainstream democrat
Mike Dunleavy was born in Scranton, PA and moved to Alaska in 1983. He worked as a teacher and other jobs in the education industry. He is the incumbent candidate in this race. During his time as governor, there was a significant effort that reached the Alaska Supreme Court to recall him, however the attempt never gathered enough signatures.
Primaries
The Alaska primary is one of the only Jungle Primaries in the country. In 2020, voters decided to adopt Ballot Measure 2, which restructures some campaign finance laws and also enacts the jungle primary and ranked choice voting. This makes Alaska's electoral system unique compared to other states. In the primaries, Mike Dunleavy won 40 percent of the vote, Les Gara and Bill Walker won 23 percent each, and Charlie Pierce won 6%. The 4 candidates advanced to the general election, with Pierce being the second republican candidate and Walker being an independent. Individual polls suggest that between two candidates either Walker or Gara would have a fighting chance against Dunleavy, but as a result of the polycandidate general election, the split support for the democrat and independent puts Dunleavy at an advantage.
Issues & controversies
One of the most notable aspect of this race is that it will be decided by a ranked choice voting system, having been initially decided by a jungle primary. This election method lead to a surprising democrat win in a prior Alaska District 1 House Special Election. Permanent Fund Dividends are a significant topic in this race -- Basically, Alaska invests its revenues from oils and gas into stocks and pays some of the earnings back to the citizens. The portion of earnigns given to citizens as opposed to reserved for the state has been highly contested by candidates, with Walker pledging to give out as much as the state can afford without increasing taxes. Dunleavy wants a 50-50 split between citizens and state giveaways, and Gara wants to give all the money to the citizens. Notable endorsements include: Dunleavy endorsed by Donald Trump, Gara endorsed by Planned Parenthood.
Campaign ads
Chance of winning over time
We run our model twice a day. Explore how our prediction has changed over the course of the race.
Recent polls
Polls consist of polls ranked C- and above gathered by FiveThirtyEight.
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