In April, Anchorage voters will determine the new makeup of the city’s legislative body, the Anchorage Assembly. A redrawing of the Assembly Districts has doubled the size of Downtown’s seat and renamed it North Anchorage.
The new, larger district is more conservative and diverse than the previous Downtown District, but still remains a reliable seat for progressives in a head-to-head matchup. In June, the district held its first election to fill the newly created 12th Assembly seat, electing progressive Daniel Volland in a six-way race with 39% of the vote.
Volland’s victory, as well as President Biden’s 2020 performance in the district, show it can remain a stronghold for the progressive majority on the Assembly. However, the more diverse, conservative and low-turnout parts of the city that were folded into North Anchorage make the seat more in play than Downtown was in recent years.
For decades, Downtown Anchorage’s Assembly seat has been half the size of a regular Assembly District. Five of Anchorage’s six districts contained about 50,000 people with two members each, while Downtown contained just about 25,000 people represented by one member.
In 2020, voters overwhelmingly passed Prop 12, which added a 12th Assembly member to the body. Now, all six districts have two Assembly members. Downtown’s sole representative at the time, Assemblyman Chris Constant, championed the initiative.
The passage of Prop 12 triggered the reapportionment process, which led major changes to the boundaries of all six Assembly Districts. Check out our interactive map for more detail.
BOUNDARIES
Since the district needed to double in size, its boundaries have extended to areas historically included in Midtown and East’s districts. Here’s a map showing how Downtown morphed into the new North Anchorage district:
- Cuts 192 people from Airport Heights (green) and places them with Midtown’s new district.
- Adds 5,400 people from Fireweed and 2,400 from Spenard from the old West and Midtown Districts.
- It also adds 14,000 people from the east side — 4,500 from Russian Jack, 2,500 from Wonder Park, and 7,000 from Ptarmigan (blue).
- The communities of Government Hill, Downtown, Fairview, South Addition, Mountain View, Eastridge, and parts of Airport Heights were carried over into the new North Anchorage district (red).
DEMOGRAPHICS
North Anchorage carries on the tradition of Downtown, remaining the most diverse seat in Anchorage. The new North Anchorage adds Fireweed and Spenard and much of Northwest Muldoon, which are both home to high concentrations of Asian and Asian American communities. As a result, the overall share of white voters declined.
| Demographic | Anchorage Muni | Old Downtown district | New North Anchorage district |
| White | 56.5% | 45% | 43% |
| Minority | 43.5% | 55% | 57% |
| Hispanic | 9% | 9% | 10% |
| Black | 5% | 11% | 11% |
| Asian | 9.5% | 10% | 12% |
| Alaska Native | 8% | 19% | 18% |
| NH/PI | 3% | 7.5% | 8% |
PARTISANSHIP
North Anchorage held a special election following the regular April municipal races to fill the new 12th seat. Since it was in the middle of multiple elections including the April muni election and June primary to fill the late-Don Young’s US House seat, only 14% of voters turned out in the new district.
Volland, optometrist and vice president of the South Addition Community Council clinic, had been running since fall of 2021.
Stephanie Taylor, a longtime member of Save Anchorage backed by Mayor Dave Bronson, entered the race just after losing to Assemblyman Forrest Dunbar in the April general by 13 points.
Also running was Tasha Hotch, a longtime tribal health advocate and candidate for school board in 2017 and 2018.
Volland and Hotch are pretty progressive, and their total vote share was one point behind Biden’s 2020 performance in the district. However, with Hotch’s late entry into the race splitting the vote, Volland beat Taylor by just under 350 votes. Here is the combined progressive vs. conservative vote mapped out using 2020 precincts:
Note the strong split between Downtown and East Anchorage. However, wealthier and overwhelmingly white communities in South Addition and historic Downtown made up over 25 % of the vote. Meanwhile, the more diverse and low-income communities like Ptarmigan and Wonder Park are much more conservative but have far lower turnout.
With the new map, North Anchorage isn’t the liberal bastion it once was, but it’s still a stretch for hard-line conservative candidates. See how changes affected the partisanship of the new seat:
| Race | Anchorage Muni | Old Downtown | North Anchorage |
| 2020 President | Biden +2 | Biden +31 | Biden +24 |
| 2021 Anc Mayoral Runoff | Bronson +1.32 | Dunbar +45 | Dunbar +26 |
| ‘16 – ’20 Average | GOP+2 | DEM +30 | DEM +25 |
Some may be surprised to see East Anchorage communities voting for conservatives, given that racial diversity is celebrated in progressive politics. In the new area drawn in from East Anchorage, the non-white population is 59.5%. Alaska Native, Asian, and Black communities are a significant percentage of the population relative to Anchorage as a whole.
The reality is that no single minority group votes as a monolith; we’ve seen several minority groups shift to the right in recent elections, most notably Latinos and Alaska Natives in 2020. Anchorage is also home to many first-generation immigrants, many of whom are socially conservative.
Additionally, class plays a huge role in determining political behavior. Much of Northwest Muldoon is overwhelmingly low-income and working class, which is where you often see less attachment to party and more alienation from national politics.
This may explain why working class communities are less politically predictable: Between the 2020 presidential election and 2021 mayoral runoff, Northeast Anchorage’s precinct voted for Biden by 9 points, and then voted for Bronson by 8 just months later. The North Muldoon precinct voted for Biden by a whopping 20 points, and then voted for Dunbar by just 6 votes. These huge swings are part of the reason Dunbar lost Anchorage in 2021 by a similar margin that Biden won it in 2020.
Downtown AssemblymanConstant, who has served in the old Downtown seat since 2017, has filed for re-election. No one has filed to challenge him as of this time.
