A poll released b y Alaskans for Better Elections on Tuesday shows strong support for Ballot Measure 2, which proposes a trio of reforms to Alaska’s election system including measures targeting dark money, open primaries and ranked-choice voting in the general elections.
The polling was conducted by Claster Consulting between Sept. 22 and 27 in an online survey of 803 Alaska voters with a self-reported margin of error of 3.5%. Overall, it shows the measure has the support of 59% of voters while 17% of voters oppose the measure and 24% are undecided.
According to the demographic breakdown of the results, the measure has net support among every group of voters. Republican voters and voters planning to vote for Trump this year are the only groups, however, that doesn’t cross the 50% mark with 46% and 49% of each group respectively saying they’d support the measure.
Ballot Measure 2 would implement measures aimed at revealing the “true source” of money flowing into independent expenditure groups targeting candidate races. It would also implement an open primary system that advances the top four candidates to the general election system, which would then be conducted with ranked-choice voting in an effort to require all candidates to have the majority support of voters.
Backers of the measure it would pry control of Alaska’s elections away from established political parties to better reflect the largely independent status of Alaska’s registered voters. It’s a change that has stiffly been opposed by Republicans who operate in a primary that blocks Democrats and voters registered to other political parties from participating.
Here’s the full breakdown of the results:
| All | Gender | Party | Borough | Age | ||||||||
| M | F | D | I | R | Anchorage | Other | 18-29 | 30-44 | 45-64 | 65+ | ||
| Total Yes | 59% | 62% | 56% | 66% | 64% | 46% | 64% | 55% | 67% | 62% | 51% | 60% |
| Yes – Definitely | 35 | 40 | 30 | 44 | 35 | 28 | 42 | 30 | 37 | 37 | 31 | 40 |
| Yes – Probably | 24 | 22 | 26 | 22 | 29 | 18 | 22 | 25 | 30 | 25 | 20 | 20 |
| Total No | 17% | 18% | 15% | 10% | 11% | 28% | 11% | 21% | 5% | 13% | 23% | 32% |
| No – Definitely | 11 | 13 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 20 | 7 | 13 | 2 | 7 | 14 | 27 |
| No – Probably | 6 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 5 |
| Undecided, Don’t Know | 24% | 20% | 29% | 24% | 25% | 26% | 25% | 24% | 28% | 25% | 26% | 8% |
| College Graduate | Race | 2020 Vote | Annual HH Income | ||||||
| Y | N | White | Non-White | Biden | Trump | Under $50k | $50-100k | $100k+ | |
| Total Yes | 69% | 51% | 58% | 60% | 72% | 49% | 54% | 64% | 59% |
| Yes – Definitely | 44 | 29 | 34 | 37 | 47 | 27 | 33 | 35 | 39 |
| Yes – Probably | 25 | 22 | 24 | 23 | 25 | 22 | 21 | 29 | 20 |
| Total No | 12% | 19% | 20% | 11% | 6% | 26% | 13% | 17% | 23% |
| No – Definitely | 8 | 12 | 14 | 4 | 2 | 17 | 7 | 10 | 17 |
| No – Probably | 4 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 4 | 9 | 6 | 7 | 6 |
| Undecided, Don’t Know | 19% | 30% | 22% | 29% | 22% | 25% | 33% | 19% | 18% |
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
