Analysis: Kreiss-Tomkins is on pace to win the governor race without ranked choices

Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins would beat Republican Bernadette Wilson with about 56% of the vote if Alaska's governor race goes to a ranked-choice count, an Alaska News analysis of the ballots counted so far shows.

He may not need that round. He is 621 votes short of winning outright, and about 40,000 ballots are still to be counted.

Kreiss-Tomkins has 49.7% of first-choice votes in the Division of Elections' latest report, released Tuesday evening. Wilson and Republicans Dave Bronson and Treg Taylor have 29%, 14% and 7%. Kreiss-Tomkins has won about 59% of the absentee votes and 57% of the early votes counted so far, and 46% of Election Day votes.

Together, the three Republican tickets drew about 120,400 first-choice votes, slightly more than Kreiss-Tomkins' 119,900. But a ranked-choice ballot moves to another candidate only if the voter ranked one.

Tuesday night, the division also posted an updated ballot-level file. It records how each ballot was marked, without identifying voters, and covers most but not all of the ballots counted so far. In it, about a third of the ballots that ranked Taylor first marked no other choice, so they would stop counting once he is eliminated. Of all the ballots that ranked Taylor first, 33% would move to Wilson, 29% to Bronson and 5% to Kreiss-Tomkins.

About three-quarters of the ballots that ranked Kreiss-Tomkins first ranked no one else. Ballots that ranked a Republican first usually ranked another Republican next, and 2% to 5% ranked Kreiss-Tomkins second.

Alaska News ran the ranked-choice rounds on that file and applied its rankings to the full preliminary count, the same method it used in its earlier Senate analysis. Once write-ins and Taylor are eliminated, Kreiss-Tomkins would have about 51.5% of the votes still counting. Because no candidate won a majority of first choices, though, the count would continue until two candidates remain, under state law.

Bronson would be eliminated next. About 55% of the ballots that ranked him first would end up with Wilson and 7% with Kreiss-Tomkins, and the rest would stop counting. That would give Kreiss-Tomkins about 56% in the final round, a lead of roughly 26,000 votes. Alaska News' first analysis, on Nov. 4, put him at about 55%, with a lead of roughly 20,000.

That is not a final result. About 40,000 ballots the division has accepted aren't in the results yet, by Alaska News' count from the division's ballot reports. Absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day can still arrive through Friday from inside the U.S. and through Nov. 18 from overseas.

By Alaska News' math, Kreiss-Tomkins would clear 50% outright, with no ranked-choice count, if he wins about 52% of the votes still to be counted. That mark ranges from about 51% to 52%, depending on whether 50,000 or 35,000 ballots remain.

Most of the uncounted ballots are absentee ballots, and the largest share, about 16,500, are from Anchorage. Alaska News also split them district by district. In that scenario, Kreiss-Tomkins would finish with about 51% of first-choice votes, enough to win without a ranked-choice count. It assumes each state House district's uncounted ballots split like its counted ballots of the same kind, with questioned ballots split like Election Day votes.

If he falls short of 50%, the count would go to ranked-choice rounds and end in a final round against Wilson. He would trail Wilson in that round only if he won less than about 14% of the votes still to be counted, even if 50,000 ballots remain. Those are scenarios, not a forecast.

The ballot-level file doesn't include ballots counted only by hand, the division says. That leaves out the Election Day ballots from 116 mostly rural precincts. The file covers 235,431 of the 245,340 ballots cast in the governor's race. Applying its rankings to the full count assumes the voters missing from it ranked the candidates the same way.

The ranked-choice count for races without a majority is scheduled for Nov. 18. If the race goes to that count and Kreiss-Tomkins wins, he would be the first Alaska governor elected in a ranked-choice count. Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the only governor elected under the current system so far, won a majority of first-choice votes in 2022, so no ranked-choice rounds were needed.