Analysis: Kreiss-Tomkins would win a ranked-choice final round on the count so far

On the ballots counted so far, voters' backup choices would give Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins about 55% of the vote in a final ranked-choice round against Republican Bernadette Wilson for Alaska governor, an Alaska News analysis of state ballot data shows. Tens of thousands of ballots are still to be counted.

Kreiss-Tomkins has 49% of first-choice votes in the Division of Elections' latest report, posted at 1:09 pm Wednesday. Wilson and Republicans Dave Bronson and Treg Taylor have 29%, 14% and 7%.

If he wins, Kreiss-Tomkins would be the first Democrat elected governor since Tony Knowles won a second term in 1998. At 37, he would also be the youngest governor in state history. Sarah Palin was 42 when she took office in 2006.

Together, the three Republican tickets drew 50.7% of first choices. But a ranked-choice ballot moves to another candidate only if the voter ranked one.

The division also posted a ballot-level file early Wednesday, which 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 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.

The ballots also show how each candidate's voters used their rankings. 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, using the same method as its Senate analysis, applied voters' rankings to the full preliminary count. That would give Kreiss-Tomkins about 50.8% of the votes still counting after Taylor is eliminated. Because no candidate won a majority of first choices, 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 55% in the final round, a lead of roughly 20,000 votes.

That is not a final result. The division plans to count more ballots starting Nov. 10, including early votes cast from Oct. 30 on and questioned ballots, and absentee ballots can arrive through Nov. 13 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 53% of the votes still to be counted. He has won about 57% of the early and absentee votes counted so far and about 46% of Election Day votes. That mark shifts by only a point or two whether 50,000 or 100,000 ballots remain.

Below it, the count would go to ranked-choice rounds and end in a final round between Kreiss-Tomkins and Wilson. He would trail Wilson in that round only if he won less than about a fifth to a third of the votes still to be counted, depending on how many ballots remain. That's well below his share of the early, absentee or Election Day votes counted so far.

The ballots still to be counted include early votes cast later in the campaign, absentee ballots and questioned ballots, a different mix than the ballots counted so far.

The ballot-level file doesn't include ballots counted only by hand, the division says, which leaves out Election Day ballots from many rural precincts. It covers 204,400 of the 215,776 ballots cast in the governor's race. Applying the file's rankings to the full count assumes voters missing from the file ranked the candidates the same way as voters in it.

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.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Alaska's ranked-choice count would stop once Kreiss-Tomkins passed 50% after Taylor's ballots moved. Under state law, unless a candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the count continues until two candidates remain.