Tangle - INTERVIEW: Ivan Moore on Alaska and ranked choice voting.

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Ivan Moore is one of Alaska's top pollsters. Today, he sits down with Tangle to discuss ranked choice voting, the contentious House and Senate races, and what he expects from the midterms.You can read today's podcast here, You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Twas the season of chaos, and all through the house, not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash.

Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.

It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be diving into a topic that is of great interest to me. And I know many of you, which is ranked choice voting and of course, the midterm elections. So

as some of you know, from our previous coverage, Alaska is kind of on the front lines of the ranked choice voting reforms. They changed their system recently. And in August, Democrat Mary Peltola defeated Republican Sarah Palin in a special election to replace Representative Don Young, who had passed away in March. Complicating the race was the existence of Nick Begich, another Republican candidate who refused to kind of cede the conservative ground to Palin. And in November, the three are going to face off again in a race to determine control of the seat for the full two-year term. Here to discuss that, Ranked Choice Voting and some of the other happenings in Alaska is Ivan Moore, a leading pollster in Alaska with

some really unique insight on what's happening there. His Twitter is a must follow. Ivan, thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it. You're welcome. We're on the cutting. I appreciate it. You're welcome. We're on the cutting edge. We're on the cutting edge. That's right. It's the first frontier, not the last frontier. Yeah, I hope so.

I mean, I guess I've sort of put my biases out there already as someone who sort of supports the rank choice voting movement. So I'm super interested to get your perspective on it. I guess first, maybe let's just start with, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and the work you do in Alaska and why you're sitting here right now? I have been, I'm originally from England. Your listeners will figure that out pretty quickly. your listeners will figure that out pretty quickly. I got to Alaska in 1988 and fell pretty quickly into the research business and set up my own shop in 1996 and been doing it for 25, 30 years. And it's been an interesting journey one way or another, kind of Alaska

politics is kind of crazy. And I shouldn't immediately equate it with politics, because people sometimes say to me, you know, what do you do when it's not political season? You know, like political work is the only thing that pollsters ever do. I have, like in the course of just done or soon to be done, doing surveys on the fishing industry, doing surveys on education in Alaska, doing surveys on the issue of sexual assault and child abuse and aces and stuff like that. So it's a very varied type of work, but it's all ultimately the process of finding out what people think about things, which is a fascinating line of work to be in, frankly. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I think it's probably one of the closest industries to what I like to think of myself as doing as a journalist or reporter or podcasters, which is sort of talking to people. And I do it on the kind of minute scale while you're getting all these

inputs from across a state like Alaska, which is obviously very big and varied. So I guess let's start there. Maybe, I mean, my understanding is that the Rank Choice Voting System was implemented in Alaska and actually what was a pretty tight vote. It wasn't a total blowout in favor of putting the system in. I think it was something like. Yeah, it was 52, 48. Yeah, it was pretty close. Yeah. So maybe we should start with how precisely this system in Alaska works, because ranked

choice voting doesn't exist in exactly the same way everywhere. So can you tell us a little bit about what the process is like in these races in Alaska and how it's functioning right now? what the process is like in these races in Alaska and how it's functioning right now? Well, I, you know, I don't know, because I'm not entirely familiar with the inner workings of the Division of Elections, who now were passed the August 16th primary, because ordinarily speaking, if it hadn't been for the special election for Congress, we still wouldn't have done a ranked choice vote. We had the primary for the special election back in June, and then August was general, if you like, for the special election. All the other races, race for governor, race for US Senate, the ranked choice vote final four won't happen until November. So we're just working up to that. But we've been through it with the special election. So from Division of Elections point of view, it was a process probably to get the kinks out and just kind of do a, you can't say exactly practice run,

because I think they were pretty focused on getting it right. It wouldn't have been good, obviously, from the public perspective of the process, if there had been any screw-ups or uncertainties, and there weren't. It was a flawless process, as I could see from the get-go. And the only thing really that's kind of up in the air is my sense that the candidates haven't quite figured out how it affects their campaigning process. They're still learning and adjusting to this brave new world where you're actually fighting your primary race and your general race at the same time and figuring out how to do that. Yeah. I mean, so I guess one of the maybe the interesting elements of this that people should know is that the way it sort of works is the goal is to get a candidate to 50% plus of the

vote. And so when there's a fourth place vote getter, say in this general election that's coming up, that person is eliminated and the second place votes from that person are then distributed to the rest of the candidates. And this process kind of repeats itself until you have a victor. So, you know, we saw this, I guess. The really interesting thing that stuck out to me from this special election race was that Nick Begich, who was the other Republican aside from Sarah Palin running, a lot of his second place votes did not go to Palin, which was sort of what people were expecting to happen, I think. And that is what helped Mary Potola win the race. So I'm wondering, I guess, from your perspective as a pollster and understanding it, I mean, what does that tell us about the voters? Is it just that Sarah Palin was very unpopular? I mean, it seems... Yeah, well, it's no, she's very popular amongst 30% of people, but she's very unpopular amongst 60 plus percent, right? And obviously, there was a survey done in Alaska, not by us, but by Fabrizio for the AARP. It came out about five or six weeks ago now. And that broke down the Sarah Palin's positive negative rating, which amongst Democrats was one positive 98 negative.

Right. So that's that shows you kind of how her profile is certainly on that end of the spectrum. is certainly on that end of the spectrum. Over on the conservative side, she's great. But her trouble was that Republicans were not of one mind with this. One of the most telling results that our polling showed is if you looked at Nick Begich's first place votes, and let's face it, when you're Sarah Palin, hoping you come second, which she did, right, you've got to get Nick Begich's second place, right? His first place votes need to be second for Sarah Palin. And the trouble was, her positive negative amongst Nick Begich voters was 70% negative. Wow. Right? And so any sense that, oh, Nick Begich is a Republican, Sarah Palin's a Republican, obviously her vote's going to go second place to Sarah Palin overwhelmingly. Well, 60% it did, but then people short voted as well, which basically means Nick Begich, first place,

nothing else. They didn't second choice, third choice, fourth choice. They just bullet voted. Or 15, 20% voted for Mary Peltola, which was how she ended up winning. And it was clear to me from the poll results that that was what was going to happen. But Predict It didn't, I go to Predict It just to get a sense of what the people are feeling kind of thing. And they had Sarah Palin as a 70% favorite up until August 16th, which blew me away. It was crazy because she wasn't going to win it. It's all very well saying that in retrospect, right? But she was the low probability of the three of them to win that thing. So what do we think, I guess, from, you know, the polling or the exit polling or the results that

we're talking about, you know, the rank choice voting system's impact on this race was? I mean, does Sarah Palin win this race in a standard kind of general election, 1v1, against someone like Mary Peltola? No, I don't think she does. I think she's struggling right now in the redo, because it is basically a redo, right, in November, except with the addition of one extra candidate, who's the fourth place libertarian guy, but, you know, 100% certainty that libertarian guy will be the first one to be eliminated, and then we'll essentially be down to the three of them. So it's exactly the same dynamic, right? And it's basically a contest between Nick Begich and Sarah Palin to see who comes second again. And of course, that was the contest that Sarah Palin won first time round, but Republicans saw how that worked out for him,

right? And so you'd have thought that if they were rational, they'd go, hmm, maybe we ought to try Nick Begich this time round. But such is the support that Sarah Palin's got, which is this kind of, I hate to use the word, but kind of cultish, relatively blind, ideological support for her. Maybe they're not going to be rational. But we'll see. If Sarah

Palin comes second again, she will lose again. You can put that in the bank. The only question as to whether Mary Peltola gets reelected, because she's now our congressperson, reelected, because she's now our congressperson, is if Nick Begich comes second, there still is the very real potential that the red nature of Alaska will see him beating Peltola in the final. That will be also up in the air. But no, if Sarah Palin comes second again, she will lose again. It's guaranteed. Because it's just very difficult to win races when your negative rating is 60, 65%. Someone should have told her that. I mean, that's fascinating. I guess, if you're the Republican Party, there's kind of this element of gamesmanship there. They got this preview of the race and the special election.

And I think I'm understanding you correctly, basically, which is, you know, the odds of Nick baggage is second place votes or Sarah Pell and second place votes going to Nick baggage are much higher than his second place votes going to her. So if you're the Republican party and you want that seat to be a Republican,

you should be backing him, right? That was the dynamic before. It's a little bit more up in the air now, thanks to Sarah Palin. And this kind of goes back to the point that I made at the beginning about how the candidates haven't quite figured out how to run a primary in general at the same time, right? Because not own, and also not figured out how to do things in their best interests in the context of a rank choice voting race. Because as soon as August 16th went by, we had this complete barrage from Sarah Palin about Nick Begich being a spoiler and he should get out and he's making Mary Peltola be elected. And basically ragging on Begich. And like no one stopped her and said, you realize this is the dude who's second, you need his second place. Right. And so we've kind of just reversed the situation where the baggage people aren't fans of Sarah Palin. And now thanks to Sarah Palin,

the Sarah Palin people aren't fans of baggage, right? And so they've kind of hurt each other. And that's what you've got to think about. And also you've got to think about the fact that you're not just running against each other. There's this other person who if you get into the final two and it's all instant, right? It's happening right now. So Sarah Palin's got to run against Begich.

She's also got to run against Peltola and make the case of why she's the better choice. And Nick Begich has got to do that. And they've kind of given her a free ride from the get-go. And so it's an interesting thing. I really don't believe that ranked choice voting favors one person or another. And I think in a lot of cases, the outcome in a ranked choice vote would probably be unchanged from what we had before, except that it got rid of the primary system, which we had up here, which was a closed Republican primary. And the other side, by virtue of the fact one side was closed, was also closed. And that polarizes the candidate selection in the primary. So that changes things. But the actual process of ranked choice voting, I think it's just good public policy. You know, it holds a runoff. So everyone's held to the standard of being the

preferred candidate amongst 50%. It does it free, and it does it instantly. And it does it in a very kind of smart, progressive way that that frankly speaking, favors Republicans up here more than it favors Democrats. But the Republicans don't get it. If you look at whether people support or oppose ranked choice voting, Republicans and conservatives hate it. Almost's like there isn't any more polarizing issue between Republicans and Democrats, between conservative and progressive right now, than ranked choice, with perhaps the exception of vaccines. It's kind of really out like that. Republicans hate it. Democrats love it. That's very interesting. I mean, why do you think that is, given your assessment that it doesn't actually favor a party over another? Well,

here's why I think it potentially favors Republicans more. Hey, historically, Republicans have loved the idea of runoff voting, right? In Alaska, we've had runoff voting in local elections, and the impetus for creating runoffs in local elections here in Anchorage, 20, 25, 30 years ago, was from the conservative right. You know why? Because there's more Republicans up here. There's more Republicans. There's more Republican candidates, conservative candidates, right?

Twas the season of chaos and all through the house, not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.

Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. And if there's more conservative candidates than liberal candidates, you're more often going to get the case where two conservatives are splitting the vote. And that's what it protects against, because you don't get a situation where one liberal candidate wins with 35% and the two conservative candidates get 30 each, and the liberal gets elected. This time, one conservative gets bounced out. Majority of their

votes go to the other conservative candidate, and the conservative wins. You don't have the split. Republicans saw this back then, and they went, we've got to have runoffs. But they do it 30 days later at huge cost. And you would have thought the next step from the conservative right would be, we're conservatives, we should really save that cost and have instant runoff instead, right? And just get it all done at the same time. But they hate it because it's thrown Lisa Mikowski a lifeline. But that's because the Republican primary like we had before, the chances of her winning would have been zero. Absolutely zero. There would have been

no market on predicted for it because it would have been 99-1. It's inconceivable that she would have won. So she was toast. So rank choice voting is seen as this boogeyman that threw her a lifeline, where really, it's nothing to do with rank choice voting per se. That's still a good thing for Republicans. So, well, let me ask you, I mean, because this is a good segue into my next question. I mean, I was going to bring up Murkowski's race, I think, because of the sort of the interesting dynamics of the Begich, Peltola, Palin race that we sort of talked about, that's gotten a ton of attention. But like you're saying, Murkowski was kind of dead to rights here in a normal, you know, or a typical from the past election season. So how has that

played out now? Obviously, she's, like you said, has survived this primary. What are we looking at come November? I mean, how do you view her odds and how do you imagine that the race might go? She will. The rank choice voting process we have here has four candidates, the top four candidates in a jungle primary. And we had the jungle primary already in August. Go forward to the ranked choice vote final. The conservative challenger, Kelly Shabaka, a, I hate to say it, nominal Democrat candidate, Patricia Chesborough. And then the second Republican who goes by the name of Buzz Kelly, who certain people think made it into the final four because people confused him for Kelly Chewbacca. They went, oh, Kelly, because her catchphrase, her campaign slogan is Kelly for Alaska. So maybe they were the low attention span voters.

But anyway, he will be eliminated first. His vote will go mostly to Chewbacca, but it's only like two or three percent. And it's highly unlikely that anyone will be over 50 percent at that point, right? And so then Chesborough gets eliminated, and literally 90 plus percent of her vote, the Democrat candidate, and she'll probably get somewhere in the mid-teens, I would imagine, in that final four. So if she gets 15%, it'll go 14 to 1 to Mikowski. And that will, I think, Mikowski is the favorite right now. But Chewbacca could win it on Predict It right now. I think it's 78-22. The last time I looked, Lisa Murkowski, 78% to win, which I think is pretty much where it is because

she's created such a chasm of support on the conservative right. And depending on how you define that, that's 30, 35, 40% of the population that's just out of the window. And it's just a matter of whether she can get enough support from the moderates through to the Democrats. And I think she will, just because Kelly Shabaka has done much too much to ingratiate herself to the conservative right and the kind of Trumpian base. And her support just absolutely falls off a cliff once you get into the moderates. And the thing about Alaska is there's lots of moderates here. There's lots of no-party people here. Our party registration is lower significantly than the breakdown that you typically see in other states.

We have a large, unwashed middle, and that's our saving grace for kind of having sensible, reasonably centrist outcomes to our elections, which is why RCV passed in the first place. was the Republican primary, more than anything that did that, that allowed this one third on the right to decide the Republican candidates, and then the other side to decide. And I don't think that's good. I think what's clear about ranked choice voting is that it brings the selection process and houses it much more kind of in the middle of the spectrum. Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, you know, from someone who writes and reports on national politics, I think Alaska is often spoken about and viewed sort of in those terms that you just put it in. I mean, sort of more moderate, a much larger center that can kind of go either way.

Yeah. a much larger center that can kind of go either way. I know Alaska is your specialty, but I'm curious, I mean, what you think, if you think a similar impact would be seen if rank choice voting were adopted in other states where, you know, there are still heated contests for Senate seats and House seats. Obviously, a lot of races aren't very competitive these days. But yeah, I mean, do you think that we would see a kind of a moderating influence if rank choice voting were to spread to more states? It's still early days, but I think generally speaking, that that is a likely outcome of it. But I want to be really clear here. It's nothing to do with the first choice, second choice, third choice, fourth choice thing. The only reason it has the potential to select more centrist winners is because the Republican primary got ditched. And that was just a prescription for extremists on both sides, because you basically got the conservatives over on this side,

picking their candidates. And the candidates that the conservative right picks are typically not palatable beyond that 30%, 35% conservative base. And similarly, the selection process on the other end, by virtue of the fact that the conservatives are conducting their own election over on the right, the left picks their candidates. And so you end up with crazy of one flavor or the other winning. And typically speaking, because of the imbalance in voter registration, that typically ends up being the Republican. What do you think? I mean, I guess I'm curious, obviously, at the national level, I think, you know, a lot of the coverage around the midterms is really focused on crime House race, replacing his seat and the Senate race? I mean, is it pretty much that kind of standard national issues or are you seeing a lot more of the local stuff driving voters right now?

It's the same mix of stuff along with a little bit of, you know, for years and years and years now, kind of going back to to having its needs looked after in D.C. I think one of the things that is kind of built into the DNA up here is a mistrust, a distrust, I should say, of Washington, D.C. and their interests not being the same as Alaska interests. Okay. And we kind of looked at our congressional delegation, which of course was just three people, two senators and a House representative to look after our interests. And for decades, we built a trio that had some real clout and longevity, seniority, power. And so there's always that flavor of things that that's what we're looking for. And that U.S. Senate, yeah, Lisa, she was first put into that seat by her father. People sometimes like to remind people of the nepotistic start to her career. But it goes back to 2002.

So she's been in 20 years, right? And she's starting to build up power. And that's always a pretty strong undercurrent up here. Now, of course, in the house race, Peltola, Palin, Begich, they would all be newcomers. We've got to be used to, get used to the idea of having a newcomer in there instead of what Don Young was, was, you know, kind of, he was feisty and he was ornery, but he was also the Dean of the House, right? And that was valued up here. So hopefully that gives you a flavor. But yeah, it's the same for a Democrat, the general sense that Democrats are the kind of anti-Second Amendment, anti-gun types, which when you consider that 75% of people

own a gun in their household up here in Alaska, isn't necessarily justified, but it's a political attack. And her line that, to me, Second Amendment rights is about food security. That was a brilliant line right there and really does kind of inoculate. So yeah, it's the same smorgasbord of issues. Roe v. Wade, obviously huge to a certain set of the population. I think one of the very interesting things about the two races, too, is the commonality between Peltola's support base and Lisa Mikowski's support base so that they have this synergy going forward, even though Mikowski's a Republican and Peltola's a Democrat, right? Weird. But both of their support bases come from women, come from largely people on the left and in the middle of the political spectrum, nonpartisans, rural Alaskans, pro-choice, etc., etc.

So I think one of the likely outcomes is potentially both of them dragging each other over the line. Very interesting. Well, listen, we're coming up on time here. I guess, you know, one last question for you while I have you, I can't help myself. I mean, you know, this is a nationally a pretty tight race for the Senate. I think most pollsters probably agree Republicans have an edge in their House odds at this point. How do you see things playing out on the national level and the makeup of Congress as we go into next year based on what you're seeing right now? You know, I think the same as what everyone else thinks. I think the House is pretty much a foregone conclusion that that flips to the

Republicans. But then keeping a very close eye on the various in play races on the Senate front. And it's, you know, seven races, pretty much up in the air, as to which way they go from the big one in Georgia, Vance and Ryan in Ohio and Nevada and Pennsylvania, of course, with Oz and Fetterman. And it could go either way. Could be 50-50 again. I think if I had to bet, I would go 51-49 right now to the Republicans, which would give them both chambers. And I think the likeliness of it going 52-48 to the Democrats and Manchin and Sinema being made irrelevant is pretty unlikely, but it's possible. It could, it's going to be fascinating to watch it. Ivan Moore, if people want to keep up with your work and follow some of your writing

and stuff, where's the best place to do that? Get on the twits. On Twitter, my handle is at Ivan Moore one. Twitter. My handle is at Ivan Moore one. Uh, I signed up sufficiently long ago, uh, that I managed to get the, uh, Ivan Moore one instead of Ivan Moore, eight numbers. Um, uh, and that's where I usually post stuff. I'm going to be doing a survey starting Wednesday this week. It'll be finished up at the weekend and all things being good. I will have numbers on the Senate race and on the Congress race early next week. Awesome. Ivan, thank you so much for the time. I'll be keeping my eye on Alaska and I appreciate you chatting with us today. Yeah.

Come up and visit sometime. I'd love to. It's great. It's great up here. It's a good place. I'm looking forward to it. I'll talk to you soon. All right. Sounds good. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Sean Brady, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who designed our logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our website at www.readtangle.com. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season?

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.