A new analysis of Alaska election data shows that a growing majority of the state’s voters are not using the ranking feature of its ranked-choice voting system, choosing instead to mark just one candidate per race.
The findings, first reported by Alaska Public Media’s Liz Ruskin in the Sept. 4 edition of her newsletter Alaska at-Large, show that in November 2022, Alaska’s first regular ranked-choice general election, 40% of voters were what election analysts call “bullet voters” — people who selected only one candidate in a race rather than ranking multiple choices. By November 2024, that share had risen to 60%. The figures are averaged across all races that had more than two candidates.
“I was kind of stunned when I saw how many Alaskans ‘bullet vote’ – that’s the term for choosing just one candidate per race and not doing any ranking,” Ruskin told Alaska Public Media’s Wesley Early.
Ruskin said she used code drafted with the help of artificial intelligence to analyze data files from Alaska’s Division of Elections, and that she checked her results with researchers who have studied the same data, who confirmed her findings.
What’s at stake in 2026
Alaska adopted ranked-choice voting for general elections after voters approved it in a 2020 ballot measure. Under the system, voters may rank candidates in order of preference; if no candidate wins a majority outright, the last-place finisher is eliminated and votes are reallocated according to voters’ next-ranked choices, in successive rounds, until one candidate secures a majority.
The trend toward bullet voting carries particular weight this year because several of Alaska’s marquee statewide races feature multiple candidates from the same party. The Senate race includes one Democrat and three Republicans. The governor’s race similarly features one Democrat and three Republicans. The House race is somewhat different, with Republican incumbent Nick Begich III facing a Democrat, a Libertarian and a non-partisan candidate.
In races where one party fields multiple candidates, failing to rank across that party’s full slate can allow votes to be exhausted before later rounds of tabulation, potentially benefiting a rival party’s single candidate.
A repeal measure is also on the ballot
Alaskans will also vote this November on Ballot Measure 2, which would eliminate ranked-choice voting and return the state to partisan primaries and traditional plurality elections. A previous repeal attempt failed by just over 700 votes, despite backers of ranked-choice voting outspending repeal supporters by a wide margin.
Whether the rise in bullet voting reflects genuine confusion or dissatisfaction with the system, or simply voters’ preference for supporting a single candidate, is not established by the data alone. But the trend gives both sides of the ranked-choice debate something to point to as Alaskans head toward another vote on the system itself.
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