Republican incumbents lead Congressional races

ALASKA — Voters in Alaska selected Republican incumbent candidates at nearly an identical rate when comparing the Presidential election to races for U.S. Congress. With over 190,000 votes statewide, Alaskans turned out to the polls on Tuesday at a rate just over 32 percent.

“(President Donald) Trump is going to do very good in our district, without a doubt he’s going to do very well. Sullivan’s going to do very well, Young is going to do very well, I believe that my district is pretty conservative. It’s very republican, they’re going to turn out in that respect for those guys. We’re also going to be no and no,” said District 9 Representative George Rauscher.

Rauscher was among a long list of Republican incumbents in the Valley who handedly won their races on Tuesday. Trump received over 60 percent of the votes in Alaska with three electoral votes on the line. Trump received 118,602 votes and former Vice President Joe Biden received 63,992 votes accounting for just over one third of all Alaskan votes cast in the Presidential election. Libertarian candidate Joe Jorgenson received just under three percent of the votes with 5,198.

“What happened in Pennsylvania tonight even shocked me,” said Assembly candidate Robert Yundt. II. “I think it’s a testament to everybody just believing that hard work does pay off and if you know given an opportunity you bring jobs back home like we’ve seen in the Lower 48.”

Local candidates provided their outlook on national races on Tuesday night before many votes had been called for either candidate and millions of absentee ballots must still be counted nationwide. In Alaska, there was a total of 206,011 ballots requested via alternative voting methods and 168,216 have already been returned. Of that toal, 119,266 absentee by mail ballots have been requested and 89,860 of those were returned. Of the 53,231 early votes cast, 33,805 of those were counted on election night.

“I wish it was a faster process,” said Assembly candidate Clayton ‘Mokie’ Tew. “You know, if your vote is in by the 3rd then it’s in by the 3rd and if it just takes extra days because that’s what it takes to process the person’s vote, everybody should have the right to vote. This is America so we should have the right to vote and as long as their vote got in there by the 3rd and if it takes an extra 10 days to count all these people that were in by he third then I’m good with it, but of course I would like to say that that’s the count on the 3rd and you’re all done and giddy up you get to go on, but that’s not how it is.”

Ballot Measure 1 that aimed to enact oil tax reform received more ‘no’ votes than any other election issue before Alaska voters on Tuesday. With nearly 65 percent of the votes, 120,999 Alaskans voted ‘no’ on Ballot Measure 1.

“I’m very happy on both ballot measures and I think the one thing that we have is that the high numbers of voter turnouts are going to make a higher threshold to get ballot measures in our state,” said Senator David Wilson. “I think that our state really needs to fix the ballot measure process and because it was a it was just a dangerous situation in the way it changes because it was just against the constitution and the constitution talks about elections for the gubernatorial races, but I think that this election really woke up some of the eyes of some of these districts. Certain districts that were always red turned a little blue and some districts that were more blue leaned a little more red so I think people just need to listen to their voters and not take their voters for granted.”

Ballot Measure 2 is not decided yet, but 24,113 more Alaskans voted ‘no’ than voted ‘yes’ with over 185,000 votes already counted. With over 20,000 more early votes to count and nearly 90,000 returned and accepted absentee ballots, Ballot Measure 2 could see a late surge from absentee vote counts.

Both Sen. Dan Sullivan and Congressman Don Young received slightly more votes than Trump on Tuesday. Young holds a lead of more than 50,000 votes over Alyse Galvin. Young received 119,999 votes accounting for 63.04 percent and Galvin received 69,647.

“It’s been fascinating to watch the polling data and results that have been coming out on those national races and I do believe that there is going to need to be a there is going to need to be a completely different way that this country looks at national polling,” said Rep. David Eastman. “At the end of the day I think the American people are going to realize that the polls are not accurate and that’s going to hopefully lead to some hard questions about why.”

Sullivan leads challenger Al Gross by 30 points after one of the most expensive Senate races in Alaska history. Sullivan received 118,978 votes to 61,362 for Gross. Alaskan Independence Party candidate John Wayne Howe received 10,532 votes accounting for 5.51 percent.

All judges in the Alaska Supreme Court, Superior Court, appeals court and district courts were retained by votes cast on Tuesday.