Alaska Primary Results: Peltola Leads Sullivan 48–43

Alaska held its nonpartisan primary on August 18. Under a system voters adopted in 2020, the top four vote-getters advance regardless of party to a ranked-choice November general election. In practice, the top-four rule usually means the top four finishers of any consequence coast through and the general is a ranked-choice competition among them. This year’s Senate primary followed that script, with one wrinkle Republicans spent months trying to fix.

The numbers

With 98% of precincts reporting Wednesday afternoon, the Alaska Division of Elections showed:

Peltola and Dan S. Sullivan advance easily. The second Dan Sullivan — a Petersburg Republican unrelated to the incumbent — is also on track for a top-four slot. The fourth spot remains too close to call, with Democrat David Leslie leading Republican Gerald Heikes by about two dozen votes.

The Peltola playbook

Peltola’s primary showing was not a surprise so much as a confirmation. She has consistently outperformed the Democratic baseline in Alaska since her 2022 special-election win, when she became the first Alaska Native ever elected to Congress. She lost her House seat in 2024 to Republican Nick Begich III by three points — on a night Trump carried the state by 13. That gap between her performance and the presidential ballot is the entire theory of the Alaska race.

Money followed. Peltola reported raising $18 million by the pre-primary filing deadline, with $4.6 million cash on hand. Sullivan reported $8.2 million raised and $7.3 million on hand. National money has poured in on both sides: the Senate Leadership Fund has reserved $17 million in television time to defend Sullivan, and Senate Majority PAC has reserved more than $12 million to support Peltola.

Her campaign platform is deliberately local: fisheries policy, subsistence-hunting access, the cost of living in rural Alaska (she likes to point out that a gallon of milk runs $17 in some villages), and a working critique of what she calls the “rigged system in D.C. that’s shutting down Alaska.’’ The word “Democrat” does not appear in most of her paid media.

She rejected Kamala Harris — on purpose

Days before the primary, Peltola publicly declined fundraising support from a PAC associated with former Vice President Kamala Harris. National Republicans framed the move as chaos in the Peltola campaign; her team called it a “staffing update” tied to her general-election pivot. The subtext was not subtle. Harris lost Alaska by 13 points in 2024. Peltola’s theory of the case requires holding a chunk of the Alaskans who voted for Trump last year, and being seen as a Harris ally is not consistent with that theory.

It is the sort of decision that annoys the national donor class and rewards a candidate who understands her actual electorate.

The ‘Decoy Dan’ complication

The second Dan Sullivan on the November ballot is a Republican named Daniel J. Sullivan from Petersburg. He is unrelated to the incumbent, has raised essentially no money, and has no active campaign presence. Alaska Republicans fought hard to keep him off the ballot, arguing that some voters would confuse the two and inadvertently reduce the incumbent’s vote. The state party dubbed him “Decoy Dan.’’ President Trump personally issued a statement last week urging Alaskans not to be fooled and to vote for “Dan S. Sullivan.’’

Under Alaska’s ballot layout, both Sullivans will appear with their full names. Under ranked-choice voting, voters who rank the “wrong” Sullivan first will still have that vote counted for the wrong candidate; there is no automatic correction. In a race that could be decided by a few thousand votes, a 2–3% share bleed to the decoy is not an academic concern.

What ranked-choice voting does in November

Alaska’s general elections use instant-runoff tabulation. Voters rank the four candidates in order of preference. If no one wins a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their ballots are redistributed to whichever of the remaining candidates each voter ranked next.

In 2022, ranked-choice worked in Peltola’s favor: she took first in the initial count and picked up transfers from eliminated candidates to clear a majority. In 2024, the arithmetic reversed and Begich beat her on the final tabulation. This year the field is smaller and cleaner — effectively a two-way race with a decoy and a fourth-place spoiler — and the transfers will matter less than the initial share.

The national stakes

Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats to take the majority. The realistic pickup targets are Maine (Collins), North Carolina (Cooper), and one or two additional seats out of Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska. Ohio and Iowa are structurally more difficult than they look on paper. That makes Alaska one of a handful of races that could plausibly be the 51st vote — and it is the only Senate race in the country where a Democrat began the general election as a slight favorite in a state Trump carried by double digits.

What’s next

The Alaska Division of Elections will certify the primary results in the coming weeks. Both major campaigns pivot immediately to the general. Expect the Senate Leadership Fund and Senate Majority PAC to accelerate their advertising, national attention to intensify, and Trump to weigh in more actively on the Decoy Dan problem. The November 3 general election will decide it — and if the count is close, the ranked-choice tabulation will run several days after Election Day.