(The Center Square) – The Alaska Republican Party is hosting a presidential preference poll on Tuesday as 14 other states have primaries for Democrats and Republicans.
Alaska statutes do not include presidential candidates as part of its primaries, so it is up to the political parties to hold them, according to the Division of Elections.
Polling districts will be open from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. so that Republicans can choose their presidential candidate. The poll is not an election, and the state’s ranked-choice voting system is not in play.
The results are expected by 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, GOP Chairman Ann Brown said in an email to The Center Square.
Alaska has 29 delegates out of the 2,429 Republican delegates, according to the website 270towin.com. A candidate will win the nomination with 1,215, about half the total.
The number of delegates up for grabs on Super Tuesday is 865. States will decide another 719 before the end of March.
Former President Donald Trump leads in the delegate count with 122, followed by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley with 24, according to 270towin.com. Two candidates who left the race also have delegates. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has nine and Vivek Ramaswamy has three.
Republicans will hold their national convention in Milwaukee July 15-18.
Trump has led the polls over Haley, the only Republican candidate still in the race. A YouGov/Economist poll of 1,688 people taken between Feb. 24-27 shows Trump in the lead. Seventy-nine percent of those polled said if the Republican primary were held today in their state, they would choose Trump. Thirteen percent said they would select Haley.
