At the Alaska primary on August 26, two ballots were available for voters who wished to vote for candidates. One contained only Republican candidates, and could be chosen by registered Republicans and registered independents. The other ballot contained the nominees of the Democratic, Libertarian, and Alaskan Independence candidates, and could be chosen by any voter.
The Alaskan Independence Party candidate for U.S. House, Don Wright, received 8.67% of the vote on the ballot he was on. Since most voters using that ballot were Democrats, that is an impressive showing. There were also two Democrats running for U.S. House on that ballot. Ethan Berkowitz received 53.97% and Diane E. Benson received 37.36%. No Libertarian ran for U.S. House. In 2006, Wright had only received 2.24% in the primary as a candidate for Governor.
In the U.S. Senate August 2008 primary, Alaskan Independence Party candidate Bob Bird got 5.39%, and Libertarian candidate Frederick Haase received 1.71%.
It’s encouraging that Bird got 5.39% in that primary,because all of his voters will in the Republican primary voting for Dave Cuddy (who lost to Stevens and is likely to endorse Bird). I think Bird could poll as high as 15-20%.
For some wacked out reason I voted Bird in the primary in hopes to creat a false illusion of support to make him more appealing to Republicans. Of course that logic makes no sense but I did it anyway. Diane Benson was my hope for Congress but she lost sadly. All of the wonderful ballot measures on the AK ballot also sadly failed.
Laine,
Bird scoring 5%, then getting the endorsement of 2 or possibly 3 of his Republican opponents (Vickers, Cuddy and another) could really boost his poll numbers. We’ll see how it plays out.
Perhaps, but honestly I dislike all of the candidates for Senator this year.
You dislike Bob Bird? He’s the PERFECT Constitutionalist.
Yes, I do dislike him because I am not a supporter of the CP. That’s why I said who I voted for in the primary didn’t make much sense considering I dislike all of them. There was no leftist third party or independent on the ballot so I just went for the AIP candidate for the sake of not throwing my vote to the major party candidate.
I would be surprised if 1/2 the particants in the ADL primary were Democrats. Overall, turnout for the combination of the ADL Republicam primaries, and the Measures Only elections was about 35%. If only registered Democrats had voted in the ADL primary it would have meant 90% turnout for Democrats. If we assume that 1/2 the ADL voters were Democrats that would mean 45% turnout for Democrats. If we assume that Democrats participated at the same rate as other voters, then about 38% of the ADL voters would have been Democrats.
Democrats only have a little over 15% of all registrants, and only a 7:3 margin over the combined registrants of all 3rd party registrants. These 3rd party voters could only vote in the ADL primary or the Measures Only primary.
Moreover, there are 3-1/2 times as many Nonpartisan and Undeclared voters as there are Democratic voters. While these voters could also vote in the Republican primary, which had contested races for both the Senate and the Congressional races, and were also more likely to stay home, there overall numbers would indicate they may have outnumbered Democrat voters in the ADL primary.
Since only the Democrats had contested races inside the ADL primary, very little can be assumed from the votes received by the unopposed Alaskan Independent or Libertarian candidates.