2022 Governor Election - Alaska

Looking for the Alaska House Forecast? Click Here

Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy is running for re-election, and his pathway to victory could be far broader depending on the first two rounds of ranked-choice voting. He’s being challenged by Democrat State Rep. Les Gara, Republican Charlie Pierce, and former Independent Governor Bill Walker. 

We have designed a special ranked-choice election model just for Alaska, modeled after our successful NYC Mayor Forecast. Once the vote count is completed, the candidate placing fourth is automatically eliminated, and their votes are rerouted to the candidate that those voters ranked second on their ballot. If neither candidate has over 50% of the vote, the same process is repeated for the third-place candidate. 

Polls indicate that Dunleavy only has a slight lead in a one-on-one matchup with Bill Walker (I), however, Walker might not be able to make it to the final round, because the early polls show him trailing Gara (D). Walker will have to convince voters that prefer a democrat over him to vote strategically in the closing weeks and increase their odds of getting a more moderate Governor than Dunleavy. 

For the first round, we estimate the vote share of each candidate by using five factors - Polling (most important), vote share in the special election, Fundraising, Experience, and the frequency Alaskans are searching each candidate on google over the last 7 days. 

Every time we update the forecast, we simulate the Alaska race 10,000 times. In each simulation, the candidates will over or underperform their projections. To predict ranked-choice voting, we built a poll average that tracks who voters say they will rank second and third - separated by the candidate they ranked first overall.