Alaska Democrats stand by their man, bail on presidential preference poll, go with voice vote conducted mostly by Zoom

On Saturday, the Alaska Democratic Party held a voice vote, abandoning their party’s experiment with a paper-ballot “presidential preference poll” style caucus.

There was only one person on the ballot for president — Joe Biden, and a lackluster turnout would have been embarrassing and, regardless of turnout, a presidential preference poll is expensive to manage in a sparsely populated state the size of Alaska.

A voice vote makes it impossible for non-party officials to know how many actually participated. Biden won the party’s majority voice vote, but the vote was not announced by 7 p.m. Alaska time on Saturday. Two Democrats from Fairbanks — Sen. Scott Kawasaki and Rep. Maxine Dibert — were on a plane to Seattle early Saturday morning and it was unclear if they intended to participate in the party vote.

Alaska delegates to the Democratic National Convention will be picked at the Democrat Party’s state convention in Juneau on May 18. All Alaska Democrat delegates will be awarded to Biden.

In 2020, the Republican Party of Alaska also did not hold a caucus-by-ballot because it only had Trump on the ballot, and officers decided it was a waste of time and money.

However, at the 2024 Alaska Republican Presidential Preference Poll, held by ballots cast in person, over 10,000 Alaskans participated: Donald Trump received 9,243 Alaska votes, Nikki Haley received 1,266 votes and Vivek Ramaswamy received 45. Since then, Ramaswamy has dropped out and endorsed Trump and Haley, also no longer a candidate, has refused to endorse the presumed nominee, going back on the promise she had made to the Republican National Committee that she would support the nominee.

Fully one in seven Alaska Republicans took part in the March 5 Presidential Preference poll, which is a party function, rather than a state-run primary.