How would Alaska behave as a Canadian province?

[Vice President Christian Man]

I assume that it would be a longtime conservative stronghold, but do you believe that it would be as conservative as Alberta?

[ottermax]

Very difficult to know as it would have developed completely differently as a Canadian province. I agree that with the influence of oil it would probably be very similar to Alberta with Anchorage voting like Calgary.

Even if Alaska were a part of Canada I'm sure the USA would find a way to bring some military presence there anyways.

One area I'm actually curious about is why parts of the Alaska panhandle like Ketchikan are so Republican given that the BC coast overall is quite liberal or NDP.

I suspect the MatSu valley would be much less populated overall as well and the more extreme right element of Alaska would be much weaker overall.

[Independents for Nihilism]

Good question. Far northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan tend to vote very strongly NDP, which is a similar pattern to what's observed in very rural and remote Alaska due to the indigenous population. I also thought that Peltola's coalition was broadly similar to what elected Notley premier of Alberta thanks to a split on the right between moderate and more extreme candidates but of course RCV means that isn't quite one-to-one. I think Alaska would end up voting between Alberta (thanks to resource extraction and general culture) and Manitoba (thanks to the urban/rural split and rural indigenous populations), which would work out to be mostly conservative but not overwhelmingly so, especially as cities like Anchorage grow, plus some shades of the territories (Yukon in particular). An extension of Northen BC might be another comparison but I'm not very familiar with the area.

Quickly eyeballing things provincially, the centre right party (maybe the PCs or maybe an Alaskan-specific party) would generally be favoured but the centre-left party (almost certainly the NDP with nary a Liberal in sight) would usually be a strong opposition with chances to break through like we might see in Saskatchewan this year. Alaska's trend of making bipartisan coalitions in the state house would probably lead to the creation of something like an "Alaska party" in this hypothetical version. Federally, they'd have at most 10 seats, which I see splitting about 7:3 Conservative to NDP with some wiggle room on either side. Perhaps a Liberal would have snuck through in Anchorage in 2015. As Ottermax said though, a Canadian Alaska would have developed differently from an American one, so who knows what novel trends might have emerged? Rural Canadian politics tends to be hyper-local, anyway.

[S019]

Alaska is so dependent on oil extraction that it’s hard to see it voting anything but Conservative. I agree the northern indigenous ridings would vote NDP and that Anchorage wouldn’t be as much of a dead zone for the Liberals or NDP as Calgary (though the Tories would still be winning Anchorage most years), so it wouldn’t be voting at Alberta levels.

[mileslunn]

For starters would have a much smaller population.  Probably only 100,000, maybe 200,000 at most, not 700,000 it has now.  My guess is due to oil and gas would vote Conservative but not quite on Alberta levels due to large indigenous population who would go NDP or Liberals.  Northern part of panhandle much like does now would lean left but Anchorage and Fairbanks would be Conservative.

[Del Tachi]

Canadian enterprise and ingenuity would have never conquered North America's last frontier.  Only America could do that.  Alaska's population would be much smaller if it was Canadian, and probably not all that different from Yukon politically.