Joe Biden wins Alaska’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary with 55% of the vote

Pre­sump­tive 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Joe Biden has pre­vailed in Alaska’s par­ty-run Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, cap­tur­ing 55% of the vote and a major­i­ty of the par­ty’s nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates, the par­ty announced this evening.

The Last Fron­tier is the first state to hold a nom­i­nat­ing event fol­low­ing Bernie Sanders’ with­draw­al from the pres­i­den­tial race. How­ev­er, vot­ing had been tak­ing place before Sanders announced his exit. Sanders secured the remain­ing 45% of the vote in Alas­ka, eas­i­ly clear­ing the via­bil­i­ty thresh­old. Because Alas­ka has so few del­e­gates, the can­di­dates will get about an equal num­ber of them.

Alas­ka Democ­rats opt­ed to hold a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry with their own infra­struc­ture this year instead of hold­ing cau­cus­es or rely­ing on a state-run pri­ma­ry like Democ­rats in Wash­ing­ton and Ida­ho chose to do. (On the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side, Alas­ka, Wash­ing­ton, and Ida­ho were all cau­cus states in 2016.)

Here’s the announce­ment from the par­ty:

“The final results of Alaska’s first ever par­ty-run pri­ma­ry uti­liz­ing ranked-choice vot­ing are as fol­lows, with fif­teen del­e­gates and two alter­nates appor­tioned. Biden: 55.3%, 10,834 votes, nine del­e­gates includ­ing one aler­nate. Sanders: 44.7%, 8,755 votes, eight del­e­gates includ­ing one alternate.”

Par­ty lead­er­ship fol­lowed up with this state­ment: “Thanks to all Alaskans who vot­ed in our par­ty-run pri­ma­ry! We added a down­load­able bal­lot, moved the dead­line & shift­ed to all vote-by-mail for the safe­ty of vot­ers & vol­un­teers — and you came through! It can and should be done everywhere.”

For con­text, Alas­ka has a pop­u­la­tion of 739,795 and about 550,000 reg­is­tered vot­ers. Most Alas­ka vot­ers do not iden­ti­fy as Democ­rats, how­ev­er, so it would be unfair to cal­cu­late turnout based on that number.

Instead, let’s use the num­ber of reg­is­tered Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in the State of Alas­ka, which has par­ty reg­is­tra­tion. As of March 2nd, there were 74,690 vot­ers in Alas­ka reg­is­tered as Democ­rats, accord­ing to the Alas­ka Depart­ment of Elec­tions. If we go with that num­ber as our uni­verse of pos­si­ble vot­ers, then we end up with turnout of 26.23%. So not stel­lar, but not abysmal either, con­sid­er­ing that the nom­i­nat­ing event was held amidst an unprece­dent­ed pandemic.

By switch­ing to a par­ty-run pri­ma­ry, Alas­ka Democ­rats were able to sub­stan­tial­ly improve turnout, even though they had to adapt to an out­break of dis­ease. In 2016, 8,447 peo­ple cau­cused for Bernie Sanders in Alas­ka, while 2,146 cau­cused for Hillary Clin­ton. Total par­tic­i­pa­tion was 10,610.

Now com­pare that to 2020. Near­ly twice as many peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Alas­ka Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s nom­i­nat­ing event this year as did last cycle.

That is a very encour­ag­ing sign for Alas­ka Democrats.

The suc­cess of this and oth­er par­ty-run pri­maries also sug­gests that this might be the last cycle where states are allowed to allo­cate nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates using cau­cus­es. Only a few states picked that option for 2020, includ­ing Iowa, Neva­da, and North Dako­ta. Iowa’s cau­cus­es were mem­o­rably marred by unex­pect­ed results report­ing prob­lems of the worst sort imaginable.

Then came the pan­dem­ic. Giv­en the events of the last few weeks, I won­der if the DNC will let any state par­ties use cau­cus­es for allo­ca­tion in 2024.

I’m guess­ing they won’t. Pri­maries — whether par­ty-run or state-run — are supe­ri­or in every way as a means of allo­cat­ing delegates.

Cau­cus­es will still exist, and will still be use­ful as a means of select­ing del­e­gates when there isn’t a pub­lic health cri­sis rag­ing. But cau­cus­es should not be used for allo­cat­ing del­e­gates. Not in Iowa, not in Neva­da, not anywhere.

Hawaii was also sched­uled to hold a par­ty-run pri­ma­ry this week­end, but their nom­i­nat­ing event has been pushed into May due to the pandemic.