Fewer hardliners won office, leading to an overwhelmingly bipartisan Senate majority, a hard-fought win on education funding, and the ability to neutralize culture warriors.

The debut in Alaska of nonpartisan open primaries and ranked choice general elections in 2022 promised to reduce polarization in government by rewarding lawmakers who prioritize solving problems over partisan gamesmanship. The system likely did not change the outcome in a majority of races, but did appear to make a difference in a few.

A handful of moderate Republican state legislators who most likely would have lost in the previous semi-closed primary system defeated more conservative candidates. The moderates appealed to a broader base of voters in their districts while the conservatives targeted a more partisan subset. In 2022, 59 of 60 legislators won in the system of open primaries and ranked choice general elections.

Two legislative sessions have passed since then. Has Juneau shown any signs of increased pragmatism? Are legislators more disposed to govern in ways that accurately reflect the views of Alaska's moderate Republican electorate? These questions are timely given that several states, including Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, DC, are considering similar changes to their voting systems.

Interviews with more than a dozen state legislators, political reporters, and longtime political watchers yielded little agreement on how exactly the election system affected lawmaking in Juneau. There was consensus, however, on the following:

The bipartisan majority in the Senate was larger than it otherwise would have been.

A larger number of Republican lawmakers were willing to override the conservative governor's widely unpopular veto of education funding in March.

Polarizing politicians on the right still won in the handful of districts where voters support them but were unable to effectively open the gates to a full-blown culture war.

Now for the caveats:

We don't have much data to go on. Alaska has had only one election using open primaries and ranked choice general elections.

Lawmakers respond to a world of stakeholders, fiscal realities, events, and other factors unrelated to whatever election system is in play.

The counterfactual (how legislators would have behaved had they been elected under Alaska's previous election system) is also unknowable.

The new election system wasn't the only big change in 2022. The decennial redrawing of Alaska's legislative districts changed the voter constituencies of sitting legislators and brought a large class of freshman lawmakers to the state capitol. These less-experienced lawmakers may not have legislated according to the bipartisan incentives introduced by the election system.

A quick explainer of Alaska's election system

In the 2022 midterms, Alaskans chose their lawmakers using a combination of open primaries and ranked choice general elections. Two years prior, Alaska voters had jettisoned the previous system of semi-closed primaries and plurality general elections, which allow candidates to win with less than a majority of votes. Alaska's current open primaries and ranked choice general elections system applies to the races for US House, US Senate, governor, and state legislature. Alaska's Republican and Democratic parties still control the presidential primaries, but Alaska uses ranked choice voting in the general election to determine which candidate receives the state's three electoral votes.

In the primaries, voters choose one favorite from a list of all the candidates. The top four candidates in each race, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the ranked choice general election. Party registration information for each candidate appears on both the primary and general election ballots. And the new system does not prevent parties or other groups from endorsing candidates.

In general election races with three or more candidates, voters rank the contenders from most to least favorit...