Republicans could still win the Alaska Senate seat that Democrat Mary Peltola has led since election night, and the state’s ranked-choice system is the reason. Peltola’s edge over Republican Senator Dan Sullivan stands at just 637 first-choice votes, and neither candidate has reached the 50% needed to win outright. When second choices come into play, the numbers so far favor Sullivan. Shadowing the count is a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot and an alleged “recruiting” scheme under state investigation.
The state’s count has not changed since November 4th, the day after Election Day, with 215,906 ballots tallied as of Sunday, November 8th. Sullivan is the incumbent Republican senator, while Peltola is the Democrat who previously held Alaska’s House seat. Alaska does not run its ranked-choice tabulation until the outstanding ballots are in, so current totals reflect first choices only.
Sullivan Jr., a Petersburg man who shares the senator’s name, pulled 3,600 first-choice votes, more than five times Peltola’s lead. Under Alaska’s system, the last-place candidate is dropped each round, and their ballots move to each voter’s next choice still in the race. Sullivan Jr. will be eliminated early, and state ballot data showed more of his voters ranked Peltola next than the senator.
As Newsweek reported, the count comes amid legal fights over the election. A federal judge on November 1st dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block a Peltola win over confusion about the two Sullivans, and state officials had argued in court that they “carefully designed the ballot to minimize voter confusion.” Governor Mike Dunleavy has ordered an investigation into claims that Peltola’s allies recruited Sullivan Jr. to run, which both deny. Ranked choice itself is on the ballot too, with a repeal measure still being counted.
About 51,000 early and absentee ballots are in hand and uncounted, and more mail ballots can still arrive. To win outright, Newsweek’s breakdown puts the needed share of the uncounted ballots at 58.3% for Peltola and 59.6% for Sullivan. After ranked choice, the bars fall to 50.3% for Peltola and 49.7% for Sullivan. If the uncounted ballots split evenly, Sullivan stays narrowly ahead, meaning Peltola must win them by about 0.7 points or more.
The projection is built from the 204,530 ballots read by scanning machines, the ones for which the state has published how each voter ranked the candidates. Newsweek then applied those transfer rates to the state’s full totals. The other roughly 11,400 ballots, mostly hand-counted in rural precincts, are in the vote totals, but their rankings are not public yet. Rejected absentee ballots are left out because they will not be counted.
The first candidate eliminated, holding about 700 ballots that split nearly evenly, barely moves the count. Sullivan Jr. goes out next, his ballots breaking toward the Democrat: about 1,040 go to Peltola, 590 to Senator Sullivan, and 650 to Gerald Heikes, a Palmer Republican who finished third with 4,846 first-choice votes. About 1,320 of his voters ranked no one else. That leaves Peltola ahead by about 1,090 entering the final elimination.
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Heikes follows him out with about 5,500 votes, his own 4,846 plus the 650 he picked up from Sullivan Jr.’s ballots. About 2,380 of those move to Senator Sullivan and 960 to Peltola, while about 2,160 ranked neither. In the estimated final round, Sullivan lands at about 105,290 votes to Peltola’s 104,960, a margin of about 333. Second choices hand Sullivan about 970 more votes than Peltola overall, the swing that flips the race.
Watch Fox’s coverage of the “Decoy Dan” allegations here:
Newsweek stressed their projection is an estimate, not an official result, with more results expected in the coming days. For scale, state ballot data showed the early and absentee ballots counted so far gave Peltola about 56.5% of first choices and 58% after ranked choice. Late-arriving mail can lean differently, making those numbers a reference point rather than a forecast.
Newsweek reached out to the Peltola and Sullivan campaigns for comment by email on Wednesday. Both campaigns were asked how they would respond if the winning margin ends up smaller than Sullivan Jr.’s vote total, a gap that would dwarf the projected final margin between Peltola and Sullivan. The state runs its ranked-choice tabulation on November 18th.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.