The Alaska Governor's Race and MVT

For those of you who missed out on the Alaska Governor’s race, let me give you a little bit of background. Alaska is a deep red state, but for the past four years it has been governed by an independent named Bill Walker. Walker decided to run for re-election this year, but was facing a stiff re-election fight from both the right and left, running against Republican Mike Dunleavy and Democrat Mark Begich. Up until mid-October, Walker and Begich had been polling similarly, in the mid to high 20s, compared with Dunleavy’s mid 40s percentages. That is, until Governor Walker dropped out of the race. As soon as Walker dropped out, he immediately endorsed Begich. What had once been a runaway win for Dunleavy became what pundits termed “volatile head-to-head matchup.”



Two-way polls conducted during the three candidate race told a different story. According to Alaska Survey Research, Dunleavy was polling 5-10 points ahead of either of his opponents in a head-to-head matchup. Thus, Dunleavy was the Condorcet winner. On election night, this was confirmed. Even with 2% of the electorate still voting for Walker, and another 2% voting for the Libertarian, Dunleavy pulled away to victory, with a commanding 52% majority.

Interestingly, Walker used the same strategy as he had used in the 2014 election. Back then, he merged his Independent campaign for governor with Democratic nominee Byron Mallett (Walker ran for Governor, with Mallett on the ticket for Lt. Gov). Together, they won a plurality of the vote over Republican incumbent Sean Parnell. Downs mentions this as a goal of political parties in The Statics and Dynamics of Party Ideologies: according to him, new political parties serve to either replace the dominant party, or be assimilated by them. While the parties were not assimilated, the based of the gubernatorial candidates were subsumed. In 2014, the supporters of the democrats were absorbed by the independent, while in 2018, the most of the supporters of the independent were absorbed by the democrat. In both cases, when one candidate dropped out, their voters were subsumed by the nearest candidate on the political spectrum, a clear demonstration of the median voter theorem.