{"id":113020,"date":"2024-10-21T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home\/alaskas-first-votes-appear-to-show-disproportionately-high-democratic-interest\/"},"modified":"2024-10-21T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T05:30:00","slug":"alaskas-first-votes-appear-to-show-disproportionately-high-democratic-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaskas-first-votes-appear-to-show-disproportionately-high-democratic-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska&#8217;s first votes appear to show disproportionately high Democratic interest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Early voting locations opened Monday across Alaska for registered voters to cast ballots in the Nov. 5 general election. The lone exception was in Fairbanks, where bad weather kept the early voting station from opening as scheduled.<\/p>\n<p>Statistics for votes cast on Monday weren&rsquo;t immediately available, but absentee ballot figures through Friday show disproportionately high participation among registered Democrats and slightly lower &mdash; but still disproportionately high &mdash; participation among registered Republicans.<\/p>\n<style>.contentHolder .fullwidth iframe {float: none !important;width: 100% !important;border: 0px !important;margin: 0px !important;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"fullwidth\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Interactive or visual content\" src=\"https:\/\/flo.uri.sh\/visualisation\/19908077\/embed?auto=1\" height=\"575\" width=\"700\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>As of Oct. 19, 56,607 voters had requested absentee ballots &mdash; a little over 9% of all registered voters in the state.<\/p>\n<p>In Alaska, any voter can vote absentee, but someone who wants to receive a blank ballot in the mail must request it &mdash; ballots aren&rsquo;t sent automatically.<\/p>\n<style>.contentHolder .fullwidth iframe {float: none !important;width: 100% !important;border: 0px !important;margin: 0px !important;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"fullwidth\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Interactive or visual content\" src=\"https:\/\/flo.uri.sh\/visualisation\/19908142\/embed?auto=1\" height=\"575\" width=\"700\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, many voters chose to vote by mail, and the absentee participation rate is much lower this year than it was in the last presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>Among the voters requesting ballots are 12,658 registered Democrats &mdash; a bit over 17% of all Democrats registered in the state.<\/p>\n<p>By comparison, 16,609 Republicans had requested absentee ballots, but because there are many more registered Republicans in the state, that&rsquo;s only a bit over 11% of all Alaska Republicans.<\/p>\n<style>.contentHolder .fullwidth iframe {float: none !important;width: 100% !important;border: 0px !important;margin: 0px !important;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"fullwidth\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Interactive or visual content\" src=\"https:\/\/flo.uri.sh\/visualisation\/19908362\/embed?auto=1\" height=\"575\" width=\"700\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>There could be many reasons for that difference. Republicans may be less willing to vote absentee this year, or Democrats may be unusually enthusiastic about the election, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Through Friday, 6,736 absentee voters had already returned their ballots to the Division of Elections, including seven people whose ballots were received way back on Sept. 23, making them Alaska&rsquo;s first voters.<\/p>\n<style>.contentHolder .fullwidth iframe {float: none !important;width: 100% !important;border: 0px !important;margin: 0px !important;}<\/style>\n<div class=\"fullwidth\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Interactive or visual content\" src=\"https:\/\/flo.uri.sh\/visualisation\/19908675\/embed?auto=1\" height=\"575\" width=\"700\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>Almost 26% of the returned ballots were from registered Democrats, even though Democrats make up barely more than 12% of the state&rsquo;s registered voters.<\/p>\n<p>A bit over 28% of the returned ballots were from registered Republicans. Registered Republicans make up about 24% of the state&rsquo;s registered voters.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s too early to tell whether that super-early turnout is a sign of a larger trend. The earliest voters are likely to be the most enthusiastic and probably aren&rsquo;t representative of the whole state.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.elections.alaska.gov\/results\/20GENR\/data\/sovc\/ElectionSummaryReportRPT24.pdf\">Four years ago<\/a>, 361,400 voters participated in Alaska&rsquo;s election, and if the state were to see that turnout again, the ballots cast through Friday would represent less than 2% of the total.<\/p>\n<p>Voters can request mailed absentee ballots through Friday, and voters who want to download a blank ballot can do so right up until the day before Election Day.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of when they&rsquo;re returned, absentee ballots won&rsquo;t be counted until after Election Day and won&rsquo;t be added to the official tally until later.<\/p>\n<p>Votes cast at early voting stations through Halloween will be included in the Election Day tally; votes from Nov. 1 onward will be tallied after Election Day.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8226; James Brooks is a longtime Alaska reporter, having previously worked at the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, Kodiak Mirror and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. <a href=\"https:\/\/alaskabeacon.com\/briefs\/alaskas-first-votes-appear-to-show-disproportionately-high-democratic-interest\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">This article<\/a> originally appeared online at alaskabeacon.com. Alaska Beacon, an affiliate of States Newsroom, is an independent, nonpartisan news organization focused on connecting Alaskans to their state government.<\/em><\/p>\n<style> figure, .tipContainer, .socContainer, .subscribeShortcodeContainer, .donateContainer {display:none !important;} .youtubeContainer { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; padding-top: 30px; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin-bottom:12px; } .youtubeContainer iframe, .video-container object, .video-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100% !important; height: 100%; margin: 12px 0px !important; } .newsroomSidebar {width:35%;max-width:35%;padding:10px;border-top:solid 2px black;background-color:#d3d3d3;float:right;margin-left:50px;} .snrsInfoboxSubContainer {padding:10px;border-top:solid 2px black;background-color:#d3d3d3;} .halfwidth {float:right;width:50%;max-width:50%;} .indent2Container {margin-left: 1em;margin-bottom:1em; border-left: solid 1px black;padding-left: 2em;} @media only screen and (max-width: 600px) {.newsroomSidebar {max-width:95%;width:95%;margin-left:4%} .halfwidth {float:none;width:100%;max-width:100%;} }<\/style><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early voting locations opened Monday across Alaska for registered voters to cast ballots in the Nov. 5 general election. The lone exception was in Fairbanks, where bad weather kept the early voting station from opening as scheduled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":113021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[329],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-113020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113020"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=113020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}