Assessing Alaska's top-4 primary and ranked choice voting electoral reform: More moderate winners, more moderate policy

Abstract

In recent years, ranked choice voting (RCV) has emerged as a leading electoral reform, often in combination with moves to open up primaries in order to increase voter choice and select more widely-supported representatives. Both nonpartisan primaries and RCV general elections have attracted advocacy from those seeking solutions to democratic malaise and polarization, and been introduced in different forms in several states. Despite this, only one legislature across the country has ever been elected under this model: the 2022 Alaskan State legislature, which combined a Top-4 nonpartisan primary with an RCV election. We assess the impact of this reform via ‘before and after’ case studies of individual electoral (re)matches, a survey of candidate ideological and policy positions, and examination of legislative coalitions. This research design allows us to isolate the impact of Top 4/RCV compared to the former model of closed party primaries and plurality general elections. We show that Alaska’s new electoral system provided more choice for voters and appears to have driven changes in both electoral outcomes and public policy. Despite more extremists standing for election post-reform, winning candidates were more likely to be centrists willing to work across the aisle and espouse moderate policy positions than prior to the reform.