Native Voting in Village Alaska

Abstract

This paper summarizes in non-tabular form the results of a study of Native voting behaviour in rural Alaska between 1958 and 1968. Election results from every precinct corresponding to a community identified by the Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska as "predominantly Native" were recorded on IBM cards. ... It should be noted that the resultant data pertain only to rural Native electoral behaviour. .... The Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska estimates that something over 70 per cent of Alaska's Natives live in 178 villages or towns that are predominantly Native - places where half or more of the residents are Native. Another 25 per cent of Alaska's Natives live in urban centres of Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Ketchikan, Kodiak and Sitka. The remainder live in non-Native towns and in one- or two-family locations. It should also be noted that most Native villages have some resident non-Natives whose votes are included in the published precinct total. In the cases of Dillingham and Bethel, this non-Native population component is sizeable. ... Data show that 12,097 rural Natives voted in the 1968 general election. This is 4,931 more than voted in the general election a decade earlier, and represents a 69 per cent increase between 1958 and 1968. The number of Eskimo voters almost doubled during this period - from 4,485 to 8,640 - whereas the number of Southeast Indian (Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimpsian) voters stayed relatively constant - from 1,101 in 1958 to 1,218 in 1968, or an 11 per cent increase. Interior Indian (Athabascan) voters increased from 1,186 in 1958 to 1,674 in 1968, and Aleut voters increased from 394 in 1958 to 565 in 1968, 43 per cent and 41 per cent increases respectively. The largest number of Eskimos and Interior Indians voted in 1968. However, the largest number of Aleuts and Southeast Indians voted in 1964. ... Of the two major U.S. political parties, the Democratic party is clearly the stronger among rural Native voters in Alaska. (During the period 1960 to 1968, no candidate identified with a party other than the Democratic and Republican parties drew an appreciable vote.) In each election contest for U.S. president, state governor, U.S. representative and U.S. senator between 1960 and 1968 (5 general elections and 14 separate contests), the percentage of votes cast for Democratic candidates in the Native villages exceeded the percentage of votes cast for the same Democratic candidates in the state as a whole by an average of 12 percentage points. In none of the 14 single contests did the state-wide electoral support for a Democratic candidate exceed the Native village electoral support. Although the data show a clear over-all preference for the Democratic party in rural Native precincts, they also show that the patterns of party preference are not static. In 1968, for example, 60 villages (38 per cent of the total) registered a Republican or no clear party preference. This compares with 30 such Republican or competitive villages (19 per cent of the total number) in 1966, and only 11 (7 per cent of the total number) in 1964. Of the 54 villages which registered a Republican party preference in the five general elections between 1960 and 1968, 26 did so in only one of these elections. Of the 17 Eskimo villages that indicated a Republican party preference in 1960, only 9 did so again in 1968. The villages in individual election districts show different degrees of attachment to the dominant party. In the 1968 general election in the seven election districts controlled by Native voters, for example, villagers voted solidly Democratic in four districts ... and highly fragmented their vote along party lines in three districts .... The figures themselves offer no clues to the reasons for shifting party preference. ... .