Preliminary Alaska primary election results
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Alaskans turned out Tuesday to vote in the 2024 state primary election.
Tuesday’s primary was not a ranked-choice voting election (in which voters select, or rank, their top four favorite candidates), but November’s general election is.
Aug. 22 - 4:55 p.m. - Eagle River candidate drops out, endorses opponent
Eagle River Republican Sharon Jackson announced Thursday afternoon that she is dropping out and plans to put her endorsement behind fellow Republican Jared Goecker, who is running a tight race against incumbent Republican Kelly Merrick for the State Senate District L seat.
Merrick currently leads the ballot count with 2,095 votes, just a few dozen ahead of Goecker, who has 2,052.
Democrat Lee Hammermeister runs third with 881 votes and Republican Ken McCarty is fourth with 699 votes.
Jackson was ranked fifth at the last count with 465 voters, only 7.5% of the count.
The District L Senate race was one of only three in this year’s primary that was guaranteed to see at least one candidate eliminated prior to November’s general election, which is a ranked-choice voting race featuring only four candidates per seat.
Aug. 21 - 7:30 a.m. - Peltola, Begich & Dahlstrom gather enough votes to advance to general election
Rep. Mary Peltola, Nick Begich and Nancy Dahlstrom have been declared some of the unofficial winners in Tuesday’s primary.
Through the morning hours, Peltola still has the most votes — about 48,000 — of all 12 U.S. House candidates, and it’s not close. The congresswoman has 50% of the vote, slightly above the combined total of Begich (27%) and Dahlstrom (20%).
Other races in Tuesday’s primary were much closer.
Senate District L (Eagle River/Chugiak) will be one race to watch in November. Candidates Kelly Merrick (2,095 votes) and Jared Goecker (2,052 votes) are in a virtual tie for first place, with an estimated 90% of the votes counted. Fellow candidates Lee Hammermeister (881 votes), Ken McCarty (699 votes) and Sharon Jackson (465 votes) all faired much poorer.
Another close race is District D (Kenai), which has incumbent Jesse Bjorkman (2,605 votes) leading challenger Ben Carpenter (2,445 votes).
Also, District R’s Mike Cronk (3,041 votes) leads Savannah Fletcher (2,996)
Aug. 20 - 11:30 p.m. - Peltola’s lead holds with 78% of precincts reporting
Incumbent Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola is leading with slightly less than 50% of the vote over Republican challengers Nick Begich (27%) and Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom (20%).
Peltola addressed Alaska Democrats across the state over Zoom, including those attending a watch party at the Broken Blender Bar in Anchorage.
As she addressed supporters from Soldotna, her team was able to react to results as they were coming in, seeing Peltola with an early lead in the race.
During her three-minute speech to supporters, she delivered a message about a positive campaign built on solutions and this election being a dry run for November.
She also said four rural communities did not have polling stations, saying the campaign learned about this on Tuesday afternoon.
“We got in Kaktovik very last minute, some ballets printed, a new polling location, and seven people were able to vote in that community,” Peltola said. “That is amazing. Every vote counts down to the last seven votes. This is such a good reminder to us that we need to be thinking about November, making sure that we have a plan to vote and that the people around us have a plan to vote.”
Peltola told Alaska’s News Source she was not attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to be in Alaska for the primary.
Aug. 20 - 10:12 p.m. - Dahlstrom says she is only candidate in U.S. House race ‘who can beat Mary Peltola’
Republican U.S. House candidate Nancy Dahlstrom announced in a campaign press release that she has advanced to the general election in November (the top four primary candidates in each race move on to the general race). In a statement, Dahlstrom suggested she is the strongest candidate to knock off incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola for the seat.
As of the latest vote tally, Dahlstrom was sitting third in the U.S. House race with 18,370 votes, or about 20.3% of the vote, behind fellow Republican Nick Begich (24,501 votes) and Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola (45,323 votes).
Aug. 20 - 9:55 p.m. - More results continue pouring in
The State of Alaska continues to add counted ballots to the vote counts across the state Tuesday night, resulting in fluid margins.
Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola still held a commanding lead of nearly 20,000 votes over her nearest challenger, Republican Nick Begich.
Peltola held 49.9% of the vote to Begich’s 27.2%. In third was Republican Nancy Dahlstrom at 20.5%, while Republican Matthew Salisbury was a distant fourth with 0.56%. Nonpartisan John Wayne Howe was fifth with 0.49%, only 60 votes behind Salisbury.
Aug. 20 - 9:10 p.m. - First results released by state
The first preliminary results were released by the Alaska Division of Elections just after 9 p.m. Tuesday.
Among the most highly-contested results, current Rep. Mary Peltola led the U.S. House race by a large margin — 533,893 votes, or 50.9% of the total tally — over the next-closest challenger, Republican Nick Begich, who had 17,940 votes for 26.9%.
Republican Nancy Dahlstrom was third with 13,299 votes, or 20%.
The only other races that had more than four candidates — meaning there would be candidates eliminated before November’s general election — were the State House District 36 race for the Tok/Northway area, and the State Senate District L race for Eagle River.
In the House District 36 race, Democrat Brandon Kowalski led the early going with 789 votes, or 35.%, while a slew of Republicans trailed behind with Rebecca Schwanke at 17.6%, Cole Snodgrass at 16.3%, and Pamela Goode at 14.5%. Dana Mock was fifth at 14.1%, just 10 votes behind Goode to advance.
In the Senate District L race, incumbent Republican Kelly Merrick led with 1,941 votes, or 34.2%, only about 80 votes ahead of fellow Republican Jared Goecker with 32.9%. Behind them, Democrat Lee Hammermeister had 14.6%, Republican Ken McCarty had 10.9%, and Republican Sharon Jackson had 7.4%.
Aug. 20 - 8:30 p.m. - Begich speaking to supporters at Wasilla restaurant
U.S. House candidate Nick Begich greeted supporters Tuesday night at the Chop House on Lake Lucille in Wasilla.
Aug. 20 - 5:50 p.m. - Early delays lead to slow start of voting day
Voting in the statewide primary got off to a slow start Tuesday with election workers in Anchorage describing the morning and afternoon turnout as “very slow.”
The State Division of Elections, which does not track voter turnout throughout election day, reported a total of 20,129 people statewide that had already voted by Sunday. Those came through early voting, absentee voting, questioned ballots, and other means. That figure was down from recent primaries.
Still voting at 100!
Ken Anderson is still performing his civic duty all these years later!
Anderson submitted a photo Tuesday afternoon showing him with a new “I voted” sticker outside his polling location in Anchorage, although he did not reveal where that was.
Anderson wrote in a post that he will be turning 101 next week.
“He made sure to vote today!” the post read.
U.S. House race
Along with the dozens of state House and Senate races — of which only two feature more than the four candidates that will advance to November’s primary election — there is also the race for Alaska’s lone seat in Congress, currently held by incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat.
Peltola is in her first term, having been elected in 2022 following the death of the late Don Young, but is facing 11 other challengers in Tuesday’s primary.
State Senate Seat L - Eagle River
In one of Alaska’s few contested primary races, three of the four state Senate candidates challenging Sen. Kelly Merrick in the Eagle River race say the incumbent is not conservative enough to represent the traditionally red district anymore.
Merrick was elected to the Alaska Senate in 2022 and is running on a campaign of no new taxes, fiscal conservatism, and investments in public safety and resource development.
However, her Republican challengers — Jared Goecker, Sharon Jackson, and Ken McCarty — feel that Merrick’s views and her votes are two different things.
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