A dozen candidates removed themselves from 2024's general election, but voters still have plenty to choose from.

A spate of candidates in Alaska made headlines for dropping out of November's general election. This, after running successfully in the state's nonpartisan open primaries to qualify for the general election ballot. For instance, in August Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom quit the US House race, and State Representative Jesse Sumner left his race for reelection in House District 28. In all, 12 candidates decided not to run in the general election despite advancing from the primary.

In Alaska's system, dropping out of a race is a personal choice made by candidates based on a multitude of factors. The greatest potential effect on voters is to make elections less competitive by shrinking their options on the ballot.

And so, our research for this article focused on whether candidate attrition made Alaska's 2024 general election less competitive than the state's previous general elections. The short answer: No, it did not.

The analysis considered the following metrics from the years 2012-2024:

Average number of candidates in state senate races

Average number of candidates in state house races

Incidence of one-candidate races in the legislature

Number of candidates in the US House race

Sightline found Alaska's 2024 election races to be either just as or more competitive than they had been in previous election years.

Alaska legislature

State senate competition peaked in 2022 and fell just slightly in 2024

In the state senate races, the average number of candidates running in the general election peaked in 2022, the debut year of Alaska's nonpartisan open primaries and ranked choice general elections. Two years later, the 2024 general election marked the second-highest candidate participation rate in the state senate races since 2012. An average of 2.3 candidates are on the ballot in Alaska's 10 state senate races, despite 5 candidates (4 Republicans and 1 affiliated with the Alaskan Independence Party3) dropping out after the primary.

State house competition also peaked in 2022, remained healthy in 2024

Like the state senate, competitiveness in Alaska's 2024 house races remains on the higher end of the historic norm. In 2024, an average of two candidates are on the ballot in the state house races. That's down from 2.3 in 2022 and about on par with the 2018 election, when 2.1 candidates on average ran for state house seats. Five candidates (4 Republicans and 1 nonpartisan candidate) dropped out of state house races in 2024.4

2024 has third-lowest number of uncontested legislative races

None of the candidate withdrawals in 2024 resulted in a race switching from contested (meaning two or more candidates participating) to uncontested (meaning just a single candidate on the ballot).5 In terms of uncontested races, 2024 ranked as the third-most competitive election year, as 2022 and 2018 both had fewer one-candidate races.

Typically, there are 50 legislative races in each election, with all 40 state house seats and half of the 20 state senate seats up for reelection every two years. However, there have been exceptions. In 2012 and 2022, mandatory redistricting resulted in 59 legislative seats on the ballot. In 2014, complications related to redistricting put 14 senate districts on the ballot. And in 2020, there was a special election for Senate District M following the death of Senator Chris Birch.

Congress: US House Race Could Have Been More Competitive

In the US House race, the number of candidates remained unchanged at four following Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom's decision to pull out of the contest, along with another Republican, Matthew Salisbury. The candidates who finished fifth and sixth in the primary, John Wayne Howe and Eric Hafner, simply took their places. Four is the maximum number of candidates who have participated in a US House general election since 2012, so by the numbers, 2024 is a competitive rac...