Sullivan campaign sees 328-vote path to victory as Peltola leads first choices

By SUZANNE DOWNING

NOV. 4, 2026 – Sen. Dan Sullivan’s campaign says Alaska’s ranked-choice count could erase Democrat Mary Peltola’s election-night lead and put the Republican incumbent ahead by 328 votes. The campaign’s Wednesday analysis uses the first batch of ballot rankings, and tens of thousands of ballots remain to be counted.

Peltola led Sullivan by 626 first-choice votes, 102,701 to 102,075, in the tally cited by the campaign. Its simulation puts Sullivan ahead 105,037 to 104,709 after two rounds of eliminations, giving him 50.08% of the ballots still in play. Read the Sullivan campaign memo here.

Peltola’s lead initially grows in the campaign’s simulation. When Decoy Dan — Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., the unaffiliated candidate who shares the incumbent’s surname — is eliminated, 1,039 ballots transfer to Peltola and 586 go to the senator. Another 657 go to Republican Gerald Heikes, leaving Peltola ahead by 1,079 votes.

Then Heikes is eliminated. Of the ballots in his pile that transfer to either finalist, about 71% go to Sullivan and 29% go to Peltola, according to the memo. Those transfers give Sullivan a net gain of 1,407 votes, enough to take the lead in the simulation.

The campaign applied transfer patterns from the state’s scanned ballot records to the broader first-choice tally. The rankings file covered 204,530 of the 215,335 ballots counted at that point, the campaign said. It said the file omitted 10,805 ballots from rural precincts, where some ballots are counted by hand. How those voters ranked the candidates, and how the outstanding ballots break, could change the result.

The campaign says it found 70 ballots on which voters marked both Sullivans as their first choice. Under Alaska’s rules, marking more than one candidate at the same rank invalidates that ranking and all lower rankings. A first-choice over-vote therefore leaves no valid vote in that race. Alaska Division of Elections voting rules.

The Sullivan campaign argues the double marks show that the two names confused voters. The marks show which candidates were selected, but not which candidate is ranked first.

The campaign expects late early votes and absentee ballots to favor Sullivan, pointing to ballots cast after The New York Times reported allegations that Peltola allies helped recruit Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. The next batch will show whether those ballots help the incumbent narrow Peltola’s first-choice lead.

The next scheduled updates are Tuesday, Nov. 10, and Friday, Nov. 13. The Division of Elections plans to run the ranked-choice tabulation Wednesday, Nov. 18, after all eligible ballots are reviewed and counted. Alaska Division of Elections results page.

Almost certainly the Peltola campaign will challenge the results and ask for a recount.