WASHINGTON — National Democrats cheered when former Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola announced on Monday that she’s challenging U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan.
Peltola, they said, gives Democrats a shot at winning a majority in the Senate.
But much more often than not, Alaska votes Republican in statewide races. Is it just wishful Democratic thinking that this race might be different?
“Alaska might be a state that has traditionally voted for Republicans, but it's far more of an independent state than it is a hard Republican state,” said Lauren French, a senior political advisor with Senate Majority PAC, affiliated with Democrat Chuck Schumer from New York, the Senate Minority Leader. “You have people there who cross parties just looking for someone who will fight for them and represent them well in the U.S. Congress and in the U.S. Senate.”
French talked up Peltola’s attributes as a candidate and said she has a winning message, which is in part an Alaska version of “affordability,” a case Democrats are making nationwide. French cited the conventional wisdom that the president’s party tends to lose seats in Congress in midterm elections.
“You're likely to see an election that, just by historical standards, is a little bit tougher for Republicans,” she said.
Analyst Kyle Kondik at the University of Virginia Center for Politics said 2026 is shaping up to be a good one for Democrats but that it would take a very big blue wave for Peltola to win.
“The Alaska Senate race is probably a lot more competitive now than it was before Mary Peltola got in,” he said. “I do still think that Dan Sullivan is favored.”
Kondik is managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which rates congressional races. When Peltola announced her run, he moved the rating for the Alaska Senate seat two categories to the left, from “safe Republican” to “leans Republican.” So did The Cook Political Report. That’s one category away from “toss-up.”
Peltola proved in 2022 – twice – that she can win a statewide election in Alaska, Kondik said, despite losing her U.S. House race in 2024.
“I think even in losing, she performed fairly impressively,” he said. “Donald Trump won Alaska by 13 (percentage) points. She lost in the final ranked choice voting allocation to now-Rep. Nick Begich by about two and a half points.”
(Peltola ultimately lost ground in the rankings. With just first choices counted, Peltola lagged Begich by about only two percentage points).
Peltola’s 2024 “overperformance” – meaning she got more votes in Alaska than the Democrat at the top of the ticket, presidential candidate and then-Vice President Kamala Harris – is important, Kondik said. It shows a significant number of Alaskans who voted for Trump also voted for Peltola.
Peltola will need that crossover appeal to succeed this year, Kondik said.
“And I do think Peltola has a fighting chance to win, even though I think you’d generally rather be the Republican nominee in a state like Alaska,” he said.
As Kondik sees it, Sullivan is a mainstream Republican without baggage, and in Alaska, that gives him a leg up.
Alaska pollster Ivan Moore, who’s worked for Democrats, points to a different metric he finds significant.
“Seven percent more Alaskans like Mary than like Dan,” he said.
Moore’s firm, Alaska Survey Research, asks Alaskans four times a year whether they have a positive or negative view of various political figures, including Peltola and Sullivan. Since Peltola became known statewide in 2022, Moore has found her “positives” to be consistently higher than Sullivan's. Moore said it’s a simple measure that matters.
“It’s about who you like,” he said. “You generally tend not to vote for people that you don't like.”
But likeability is not the whole story. Moore also found that 10% of people who said they didn’t like Sullivan also said they’d vote for him. That could be because they prefer Republicans or because they like Trump, and Sullivan aligns himself with the president.
How Alaskans feel about Trump, Moore said, is tied to how they feel about Sullivan.
“And so his numbers will rise and fall based on Trump's fortunes,” he said.
Sullivan’s campaign spokesman, Nate Adams, said Team Sullivan remains confident of the senator’s re-election. Adams, who has access to internal polling that hasn’t been made public, doesn’t think much of the idea that the election is a referendum on Trump, or that Sullivan’s fate is linked to Trump’s popularity.
“I think Alaska is still very much a state that is a lot more complex than ‘red team and blue team,’” he said.
Amid the substantial national attention Peltola generated with her launch, Sullivan’s campaign has been highlighting prominent Alaskans endorsing the Republican incumbent.
“You know, Alaska Native leaders, trades, unions,” Adams said. “There are more of these forthcoming, but these are groups and coalitions that have traditionally backed Mary in her previous races, who, on Day 1 – if not before and certainly in the days after – have decided to support Sen. Sullivan.”
One thing everyone is certain of: National groups on both sides will raise and spend boatloads of money trying to win Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat.
