Case Studies: RCV in Maine and Alaska

Maine and Alaska are the first two US states to use Ranked Choice Voting.  With RCV on the ballot in several more states this November, it’s a good chance to compare how the system works in each state and how it has affected election outcomes thus far.

RCV first came to Maine when the City of Portland adopted the method in 2011. The election of controversial Governor Paul LePage with less than a majority vote twice (with only 38% in 2010) led to the push for RCV statewide.  Maine adopted RCV in 2016 through a citizens’ petition and ballot measure. Because the state constitution explicitly requires that state offices be won with a plurality, Maine only uses RCV in its partisan primaries for governor, state senator, and state representative, and in both partisan primaries and general elections for US senator, US representative, and US president.

Voters also approved RCV by ballot measure in Alaska, which passed with 50.5% of the vote in 2020. Measure Two included the switch from partisan (closed) primaries to an open primary, with the top four candidates moving to the general election conducted using RCV.  This offers a contrast to Maine’s system where the winner of each party’s primary face each other in November.

Maine has a longer history of RCV elections than Alaska. In the 2018 party primaries, only two races needed more than a single round of voting to decide the winner and in both cases, the plurality winner was also the majority winner. In the 2018 general election, 16 of the 17 races with more than two candidates were not closely competitive, and the winner received a majority of first-choice votes.

The race for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in 2018 was one where RCV resulted in an ultimate winner who did not win a plurality in the first round. Sitting Representative Poliquin (R) received 46.3% over Golden (D) with 45.6%, and independents Bond and Hoar with 5.7% and 2.4%, respectively. More voters for these independent candidates preferred Golden as their 2nd of 3rd choice and he won in the final round with 50.6%.

In 2020 Maine’s nine primary races and 10 general elections had more than two candidates and offered ranked ballots. In 13 races a majority winner was reached in the first round of RCV and in the rest the plurality winner consolidated their lead in subsequent rounds and won a majority. The same was true in 2022, with only four contests needing to go to subsequent rounds with no change in the first-place winner.

Alaska’s primary and general elections in 2022 and the 2024 primaries are the only statewide races that have used RCV to date. In all the 2022 statewide elections, the leader in the primary won in the general election, but the open primary led to somewhat surprising results. In the Senate race three Republicans and one Democrat went to the general election. Sen. Lisa Murkowski narrowly led with 43.4% over Kelly Tshibaka’s (R) 42.6% in the first round. The fourth-place Republican’s votes went mostly to Tshibaka, but Democrat Pat Chesbro’s voters preference for Murkowski gave her the majority with 54%.

In the 2022 race for Alaska’s sole U.S. House seat one Democrat, Mary Peltola, two Republicans, Sarah Palin’s and Nick Beggich, and a Libertarian (Chris Bye) advanced to the general election. Peltola won the first round with 48.8% ahead of Palin in second with 25.7%. In the second round Peltola gained 49.2%. Even though most of Beggich’s voters preferred Palin, 7,500 of them voted for Peltola and gave her the majority with 55%. In the 2024 open primary, Peltola won an outright majority with 51% of the vote, but third-place finisher Nancy Dahlstrom (20%) has withdrawn and endorsed her Beggich who came in second with 27%.

In both Maine and Alaska, RCV doesn’t typically lead to a change from the plurality winner to the winner of the final vote. Where it has affected the outcome, the result was the more centrist candidate who garnered enough support to win the majority in the final round.