Far West - 2024 Election Compendium
Topic: 2024 Election Analysis
Far West 2024 Presidential Election Review
Author’s Note: All other election reviews can be found here.
This portion of the 2024 Election Compendium focuses on two states in a region I am referring to as the “Far West” – Alaska and Hawaii.
Outcomes
Alaska Trump +13.1%
Hawaii Harris +23.1%
Alaska Trump by minimum of 10.0%
Hawaii Harris by minimum of 20.0%
Preface
Even though at the shortest distance Alaska and Hawaii are 1,575 air miles apart, they are nevertheless grouped together when people think of national elections because they are the only states, for now, located outside the continental U.S. They are also two of the most predictable states, with Alaska having backed every GOP presidential nominee since 1968, and Hawaii every Democrat nominee since 1988. The two have only agreed on presidential nominees 3 times out of a possible 17 – 1964, 1972, and 1984.
Both states administer horrific elections. Hawaii is a universal mail-in balloting state with Automatic Voter Registration, while Alaska is a reliably red state doing all it can to make itself into a blue state by passing legislation only damn fools would consider, like expanding mail-in balloting and forwarding ballot measures to use the Permanent Fund Dividend (resident oil money) to automatically register voters and install Ranked Choice Voting (more on that later). Both also have significant native populations (Native Alaskans and Native Hawaiians) that stand to alter statewide politics pending any changes to the way elections are run.
Of these two states, only one registers voters by party. It shifted as shown below from 2020 to 2024:
· Alaska from R+11.1% in 2020 to R+11.8% in 2024
Analysis
ALASKA
· Alaska recognizes many political parties and registers its voters by party, although there is no way to group them by borough (county equivalent) since Alaska reports its election results by census area. The state shifted slightly Republican by registration since 2020, and it should be noted that Automatic Voter Registration in the state dilutes partisan registrations by registering more non-affiliated voters.
· In keeping with the party registration index, Alaska became more Republican for Trump in 2024, moving from Trump +10.1% to +13.1%.
· In a reaggregation of votes, Trump flipped four boroughs: Dillingham, Lake and Peninsula, Northwest Arctic, and Prince of Wales-Hyder (shown below in dark red):
· Trump expanded his margin of victory from 2020, when he lost Anchorage Borough in a quasi-election for the first GOP presidential defeat there since 1964. Trump did not flip Anchorage in 2024, but his margin grew because he made substantial gains with Native Alaskans, who make up more than 15% of the state’s population.
· With 54.5% of the vote, Trump won the state on the first ballot of Ranked-Choice Voting (no need for additional ballots and reallocation of eliminated candidates’ votes); however, Republican Nick Begich required a second ballot to dispatch incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola from Alaska’s At-Large U.S. House seat. He topped her 48.4% to 46.4% in the first round, and in the next round won 51.2 to 48.8%, which took until November 20 to count. For more on how Ranked Choice Voting (which saved Lisa Murkowski’s political career in 2022) works, read here.
· Ballot Measure 2, which sought to repeal Ranked Choice Voting, was defeated by 664 ballots, 50.1% to 49.9% after more than two weeks of counting. In the regional breakdown, I will demonstrate why this is likely a fraudulent outcome.
HAWAII
· In Hawaii, where voters are not registered by party, all 5 counties (100.0%) shifted more Republican in percentage margin, meaning Trump lost them by less than he did in 2020. See shifts by county below (Kalawao not captured):
· No Republican has carried any of Hawaii’s counties since 1984, when Reagan won the state by 11.3%. Here are the margins in each county for each of Trump’s three races:
· Honolulu County accounted for almost exactly two-thirds of the vote in Hawaii’s 2024 election and was 28,798 ballots in margin more favorable for Trump than it was in 2020, in a highly manipulated election outcome in which Joe Biden somehow outperformed Hawaiian Barack Obama for votes when the Republican incumbent (Trump) had his second highest percentage gain out of all the states from 2016 to 2020.
· In Kauai County, Trump again won the primitive island of Niihau, this time 22 ballots to 1. That county is under fire for election maladministration for having a mismatch in the certified count of mail-in ballots received, suggesting the state’s universal mail-in balloting procedures create openings for inserting fraudulent ballots. As a reminder, Kauai is by far the smallest of the four main counties; if this issue is prevalent throughout all of Hawaii, the certified results are not to be trusted at all.
· Of the four main counties, Trump swung Honolulu County 5.2%, Hawaii County 8.0%, Kauai County 9.3%, and Maui County 9.6%, finishing with the best GOP presidential performance since 2004. Much of his progress is owed to gains with Native Hawaiians, who make up nearly 11% of the state’s population, and also due to the Biden administration being blamed for poorly managed 2023 Maui wildfire disaster.
REGION
· Harris lagged Biden by 14.5%, or 53,086 ballots in Hawaii, while Trump slightly lagged his own 2020 ballot count there. This is suggestive of both Democrat voter apathy, and a failure for them to concentrate as extensively on ballot collection, especially in Honolulu County, where Harris dropped 34,568 ballots and became the first Democrat nominee to fail to reach 60% of the vote since 2004. I believe Hawaii now has baked-in manipulation thanks to the universal mail-in system and ballot harvesting which helps ensure the strongest Democrat legislative and municipal office composition possible.
· In Alaska, Harris lagged Biden by 13,752 ballots, while Trump also lagged his 2020 totals. Using census area estimates, Harris dropped over 6,000 ballots in Anchorage, 1,000 in Fairbanks North Star, and fewer than 1,000 in Juneau and Kenai Peninsula. Incredibly, she gained almost 500 ballots over Biden’s suspiciously high 2020 count in Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough, which is the conservative heart of Alaska and not likely to be fertile for Democrat gains if they are going backward in more suitable locations.
· Harris also piled up surprisingly high ballot counts in small census areas, such as Yakutat, Skagway, Ketchikan Gateway, and Denali, which (if ballots are being harvested up and cast) could have given the requisite 664 ballot margin needed to retain Ranked Choice Voting and defeat Ballot Measure 2.
· These two states produced the following margins in all three of Trump’s races:
Trump improved his national popular vote standing by 58,042 ballots in these two states. My read on the 2024 results is that urban areas were not heavily manipulated by ballot harvesters, at least not to the extent that they were in 2020, but in Alaska, I feel it is likely that after weeks of counting and selectively inconsistent Harris ballot gains in remote or conservative areas, that the Ranked Choice Voting repeal was not fairly defeated. Lisa Murkowski would know better than anyone how to rip off the outlying villages and tribal areas for extra ballots.
Opportunities for Election Manipulation
Here is how these two states rank with regard to my most commonly assessed demerits:
· Voter ID – Hawaii does not require identification for voting, but Alaska does (photo not required).
· Same Day Registration – Hawaii, but not Alaska, permits same day voter registration.
· Ballot Harvesting – Neither state has specified laws to govern ballot harvesting, meaning it is fully authorized by any means available.
· Excessive Mail-In Balloting – Hawaii has universal mail-in balloting, by which every registrant is sent a ballot, and Alaska has no-excuse mail-in voting (enough to tip a 664-ballot margin statewide).
· Automatic Voter Registration – Both of these states operate AVR and have voter rolls filled with ineligible entries.
· Ranked Choice Voting – Alaska is one of two states to operate Ranked Choice Voting, along with Maine. It is the only reason Lisa Murkowski remained in the U.S. Senate in 2022 and is why Sarah Palin did not get elected to the U.S. House after Don Young died.
· Prolonged Counting – Alaska has been embarrassingly slow in tabulating ballots for the past three federal election cycles, which has been made far more complicated thanks to Ranked Choice Voting. Hawaii, a universal mail-in balloting state, has the same issues, but since it isn’t a close state, doesn’t receive the same level of scrutiny.
The Pathway Ahead
Despite the litany of issues in Alaska pertaining to elections, the shift of the Native Alaskan population for the past two elections should keep any Democrat momentum at bay statewide. Alaska Republicans have been passing one ridiculous measure after another, so I have been concerned they were going to be turning their state into a less populated version of Oregon by the 2030s. Placing restrictions on mail-in ballots and pushing as hard as possible to eliminate Ranked Choice Voting on another ballot initiative in 2026 is key to saving the state from future Democrat control. Republicans should join the fray and harvest every loose ballots between Ketchikan and Barrow if they want to relegate RCV to the dustbin of electoral history.
Hawaii falls into the same boat as California, Oregon, Washington, and Colorado, in that it will require judicial intervention to strike unfair election procedures down, place controls on mail-in balloting, and force a purging of the state’s bloated voter rolls. Minority voters in Hawaii should continue to become less Democrat, but cleaning up elections is the only thing that will make the Republican Party anything more than a token challenger in the Aloha State.
Final Grades and Closing Commentary
The Top 5 Election Integrity Targets in the Far West are (in no order):
· Anchorage Borough, AK
· Matanuska-Susitna Borough, AK
· Fairbanks North Star Borough, AK
· Honolulu County, HI
· Hawaii County, HI
Alaska receives a Grade of 3 – Elevated Concern – based on its reckless election laws, such as no-excuse mail-in voting, acceptable ballot harvesting, Ranked Choice Voting, and Automatic Voter Registration, which are among the worst of any GOP Presidential State, including Utah. Census area returns suggest that the Ranked Choice Voting repeal was likely defeated illegitimately by a relatively small quantity of bad mail-in ballots.
Hawaii receives a Grade of 3 – Elevated Concern – based on its corrupt elections infrastructure, which feature a wish list of blue state election laws on the books, and on local investigations revealing continued troubles with counterfeit mail-in balloting occurring in Kauai, and likely on the larger islands.
Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.
Keep saying it like it is. Few dare to go there. Thank you is not enough.