2020 Pacific Federal Election (Western Sunrise)

The 2020 Pacific federal election took place on November 3, 2020 to elect members to the House of Representatives, as well as to the governorships of the 13 states. Eleven parties won seats, with two parties registered in specific states. Issues dominating the election included the COVID-19 pandemic, a budget surplus created by the Cox-led Conservative government, and campaign finance scandals when Cox and other Conservatives took $16 million from Alaska oil and gas companies.

The Liberals, led by Michael Bennet of Colorado won the most seats, forming a coalition with Progressives, Farmer-Labor, and the Cascadians to form a 252-seat coalition. The newly-formed Mormon Party, while only gaining ballot access in Utah, elected Mitt Romney as their party leader and picked up 11 seats in the state. Conservatives and Red Dogs suffered some of their worst losses in recent memory, losing ground in Nevada and Pueblo and losing more than half of their seats in Utah.

COVID-19 pandemic
On January 20, 2020, the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Seattle, Washington. Despite much anti-Asian sentiment and initial downplaying of the virus's severity, President Cox cooperated with Liberals for relief plans and gave governors more resources to protect their citizens. Support for the cooperative solutions and relief bills was high, but soon support for the Conservative coalition eroded due to the other pressing events of the Cox administration.

Campaign finance scandals
On January 2, 2019, President Cox and other Conservative leaders, such as future Opposition Leader Michael Crapo, boarded a plane to Fairbanks, Alaska to visit a meeting with the CEO of the Alaska Oil Committee, Dan Sullivan. Cox took a $6.8 million paycheck from AKOC for 2020 campaigns. In exchange, Cox would sign a permit to open up more space in northern Alaska for exploration and drilling. On January 28, Cox signed an executive order opening the Tongass National Forest, among others, up to corporations for drilling and logging.

On May 16, 2020, the LA Times obtained recordings from the meeting and subsequent calls between Cox and AKOC. The next day, they released it to the public days before the election of Representative Michael Bennet as the Liberal leader. He and others made the recordings a key issue in the 2020 elections and after Election Day's results were finalized, some analysts claimed that the paycheck and LAT's leaks regarding the deal doomed their chances nationally.

Polling
Throughout the election season, some pollsters, aggregators, and news networks surveyed the public to calculate predictions and trends. Below is the trendline displayed by the Western Political Activity Council, which polled an average of 26,932 likely voters in each poll and polled 21,446 voters in its exit polls.