United States presidential election in Alaska, 2016



The 2016 United States presidential election in Alaska took place on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election. Voters chose three representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice President.

Alaska was won by incumbent President William C. Rutherford (D-Texas) with 65.91% of the popular vote against U.S. Senator Thomas P. Leach (R-Arizona) with 34.09%. Rutherford won the national vote as well, defeating Leach to win a second term as President. This is the third presidential election in Alaska's history that the state has voted for a Democratic candidate, partially due to Rutherford's landslide victory throughout the rest of the country (except for the Deep Southern states of Alabama and Mississippi), and partially because the state had trended perceptibly towards the Democrats in recent years. Indeed, despite Rutherford's landslide, Alaska came out as 6.62% more Democratic than the nation

At a more local level, all boroughs and census areas voted for Rutherford, including the relatively populous boroughs of Anchorage, Matanuska-Sustina, Fairbanks North Star, Ketchikan Gateway, and Kodiak Island, which had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1984. Rutherford was also the first Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 to win the boroughs of the Aleutians West and the Aleutians East.

This was the second time in Alaska's state history that a third-party candidate failed to get on the ballot in the state.