Dear Reader,
I currently run #weeklystateprofile on Twitter (please follow me at @ParakramKarnik), where I take a quick dive into the political climate of each state in the country. This article is about my profile of Alaska; the thread is linked here.
Also, as my school starts, my workload is beginning to increase. Therefore, I may not be able to publish articles at the once-per-week schedule I had previously been striving for.
I hope you enjoy this mini-tour of the Last Frontier.
Best, Parakram Karnik
The Last Frontier is a Republican-friendly state with a strong independent and libertarian streak. The Cook Partisan Voting Index (PVI) measures how much a state votes to the right or left of the national average; Alaska’s Cook PVI is R+9, and the average statewide result can be seen below.
History
On paper, Alaska looks like a very GOP state. Republican Representative Don Young has represented it since 1973; he is the longest-serving member of the House currently seated. It also sends a pair of Republicans to the US Senate, and I have written an article before about the danger Senator Murkowski is facing by being too moderate. You can read it by clicking the button below.
However, Alaska was initially a Democratic state, albeit not a strong one. It took 7 years since statehood in 1959 for a Republican to be elected as the state’s congressional representative, and Alaska has had two Republican senators only starting from 1980. In fact, if it weren't for one key factor, Alaska would be very similar to Colorado politically.
That one factor is oil. In the 1970s, an oil boom began in Alaska, and the state is dependent on that resource up to this day. Oil is so lucrative for the state that instead of taxing people, Alaska actually uses tax revenues from oil companies to give each citizen an annual stipend. Therefore, every Alaska resident is a stakeholder in the fortunes and future of the oil industry and the underlying commodity.
At the same time, the Democratic Party began folding in the more moderate elements of the environmentalist wing of the New Left into the party. For context, the New Left was a youth middle-class movement in the 1960s that sought to bring leftist and left-wing radical perspectives to fields that had previously not seen them (such as race, gender, ethnicity, environmentalism), while also countering the status quo of the American 50s. By 1979, President Jimmy Carter had put solar panels on the roof of the White House, environmentalists occupied key positions in the Carter administration, and the Democratic Party at large was associated with the environmentalist movement; this provided a sharp contrast to the GOP, which was increasingly associated with traditional sources of energy and was sympathetic to the cause of the fossil fuel industry.
While environmentalism was popular in many areas of the US, it definitely was not in Alaska. This movement threatened the very idea that made Alaska a thriving state. An electoral pattern can be observed in Alaska, where Democrats suffer when they are perceived as championing environmentalism. Below, you can see the collapse of the Democratic Party from 1968 to 1980, as they lost over 10% of their vote-share. In addition, the Democrats also severely underperformed again when environmentalist Al Gore was on the presidential ballot in 2000.
To summarize, at the federal level, the electoral performance of the two parties in Alaska can easily be explained by their positions on the oil industry and the environment at large.
Communities of Alaska
The Democratic Coalition
One group that has notably formed the backbone of the Democratic Party in Alaska is the collection of Alaska Native communities. While they will occasionally vote Republican at the federal level if the Democrat on the ticket is too opposed to the oil industry, they reliably vote Democratic at the state level. Alaska Natives hold a majority in the north of the state, often called the Bush by locals. The Bush and Northern Alaska are not connected to the North American road system and are very remote.
Another notable partner in the Democratic coalition is the Southeast of the state. This area entails the cities of Juneau and Sitka, the former being the state capital.
In the middle
A swing area in Alaska is the city of Anchorage. With its economy almost entirely driven by oil, this city traditionally votes Republican, though Trump’s populism did not appeal to its urban sensibilities. While voting down-ballot for Republicans, Democratic candidate Biden carried the city for the Democratic ticket for the first time since Lyndon B Johnson. Going forward, many wonder if Anchorage will slide further towards the Democratic Party as the GOP continues to stand with Trump. Conversely, maybe Biden’s new regulations on the oil industry may remind Anchorage why it voted GOP in the first place.
The Republican Majority
Where do the Republicans build their majorities? The Kenai Peninsula is a good place to start. Housing a sizable portion of Alaska's population, this region breaks for Republicans with a good margin of over 60%.
Republicans also do very well in the more accessible parts of the state’s interior. These areas depend on their guns to survive and oil money to thrive; it should be pretty obvious why Democrats don’t do well here. In addition, their accessibility has also made these regions quite populous. Republican strength in these two areas typically prevents a Democratic majority from occurring in the state. Finally, the city of Fairbanks breaks heavily (for an urban center) towards the GOP, giving Republicans the margins they need to comfortably win in statewide federal elections.
Unique quirks of state-level politics
At the local level, Democrats perform much better than their federal counterparts, largely due to their ability to support gun rights and oil in a way the national party can’t. It should also be noted that most Alaskans are registered independents, and independents here do very well in down-ballot races compared to other states. 10% of the Alaska House of Representatives are independents, which is among the highest proportion in the nation.
At the state level, these two things often deny the GOP a trifecta (control of both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion). A coalition of Democrats, Independents, and liberal independent Republicans currently have a majority in the Alaska House of Representatives, denying the GOP total control of policy-making.
Conclusion
The Democrats, especially the local ones, can do better going forward in the state. While keeping their gains among the North and Southeast of the state, they can also launch an aggressive push in Anchorage. In contrast, Democratic candidates trying to represent Alaska at the federal level are hobbled by the party’s opposition to fossil fuels and guns, thereby keeping the state safely in Republican hands.