Talk:Political party strength in Alaska

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What is going on in the table? Not only are Independant and Alaska Independant keyed to the same color (not that it seems to matter) but I can't make sense of the "President" collumn at all. I think this page needs some work.--216.87.207.1 (talk) 14:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia doesn't currently have a color designated for Alaskan Independence, so I just used the established Independent color. If you can suggest a color for Alaskan Independence, please do. Do/did they have any particular color associated with their movement? What's confusing about the "President" column? This article does need expansion and is thus tagged as such. Feel free to help expand the table. Qqqqqq (talk) 15:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I find this table fascinating, you can clearly see how the Democrats held sway before big oil money came to AK in the 70's. However, while it seems correct as far as I know, there is no source listed for this information, so I have rated it as stub class. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:27, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I started to build this article based solely on the content of other articles, all of which are wikilinked to in the column headers. As a result, I'm not really sure how to source the table. Stub seems right to me, though, since the table is incomplete. Qqqqqq (talk) 21:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Relevance of the coalition
I fail to see how the coalition is at all relevant to the subject of political party strength. Furthermore, I bet that whenever this article is completed, somehow the coalitions which existed during the 1970s and 1980s (mostly in the House) won't be acknowledged. The 8th and 12th Legislatures immediately come to mind when thinking of that.RadioKAOS (talk) 03:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Issues with table and entries

 * Governor: Prior to statehood, the governor's position was a presidential appointee. Therefore, the party of the governor is going to be the same as that of the U.S. President.


 * Territorial elective offices: The governor and his party is listed back to the beginning of time, even though it wasn't an elective office until statehood. However, numerous territory-wide elective offices existed during territorial days (e.g. attorney general, various cabinet-level offices).  The Secretary of Alaska, one of those such offices, is a direct forerunner to the Secretary of State, which became the Lieutenant Governor in 1970 (even though List of lieutenant governors of Alaska states or otherwise implies differently).  None of those offices are even faintly acknowledged.


 * Legislature: Alaska has been electing a legislature since 1912, though I suspect that the rather large hole in the existing page is due to contributor inertia. I previously asked what the recent Senate coalition has to do with political party strength and received no appropriate response.

RadioKAOS (talk) 09:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Congress: Would it be appropriate to include the "Tennessee Plan" congressional delegation elected from Alaska in 1956, and who represented Alaska (albeit as little more than lobbyists for Alaska statehood) during the 85th United States Congress?

Whilst looking for something else, I came across official election returns for the territory from 1948 and 1954. Just assuming that the territory-wide elected offices were for 4-year terms, this should provide enough overlap to encompass all of the offices. If there were any other offices, they probably aren't all that hard to research:


 * Attorney General
 * Auditor
 * Highway Engineer
 * Commissioner of Labor
 * Treasurer

The 1948 results do not list any party affiliations of any candidates (including congressional delegate and the legislature), but the 1954 results do. RadioKAOS (talk) 22:38, 28 May 2010 (UTC)