RCV in Alaska's 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary
Deb Otis |
The Alaska Democratic Party use ranked choice voting (RCV) in the 2020 presidential primary. See below for results and analysis.
How RCV works in presidential primaries
In elections with a 15% threshold to earn delegates (like in Alaska), RCV eliminates candidates below the 15% threshold and transfers those ballots to those voters’ next choice candidate. This process continues until all remaining candidates are across the threshold. Delegates are awarded proportionally among the active candidates.
RCV results in Alaska
Find more visualizations of this result at RCVis.com
Top takeaways
- Despite a global pandemic, 19,813 votes were cast compared to 10,610 in their 2016’s caucus-only system and 8,880 in 2008.
- Joe Biden fell just short of 50% of first choices, but won a clear majority after the ranked choice voting tally, defeating Bernie Sanders by 55.3% to 44.7%, winning 8 of 15 delegates.
- 10.8% of voters picked a candidate who had dropped out weeks ago as their #1 choice, reflecting a pattern in other Democratic contests. But unlike the over two million such voters in other states, these Alaska voters could indicate their backup choices — and more than 92% of them had their ballot count for Biden or Sanders in the final round.
Voter education materials from Alaska
Further reading
Ranked Choice Voting in Presidential Primaries. A research report from FairVote about the five state Democratic parties who used RCV in 2020 presidential primaries.
