Vol. II, No. 172 From Our Region to Yours
Politics

Trump Finds Dan Sullivan Ahead in Alaska After Adding the Other Dan Sullivan

With Mary Peltola up 637 votes and a quarter of the ballots uncounted, the president merged both Dan Sullivans and a third candidate into one column and declared the race "OVER." Alaska's count resumes Tuesday.

By 2 min read

An antique black metal adding machine on a wooden desk, its worn gold lettering reading "Triumph Adding Machine." Eight columns of numbered wheels run down the front beneath a row of small windows showing the digits 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 0, 2, 3. An ornate mantel clock sits on a shelf behind it.
A Triumph adding machine. Alaska is using a different method, which involves the voters. Photo: Gnangarra / CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Alaska Senate race has a leader, a quarter of its ballots still uncounted and, as of Saturday afternoon, a second set of results prepared by the president of the United States.

In the official count, Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan 48.17% to 47.88%, a margin of 637 votes, with about three-quarters of the expected vote counted. In the count President Trump posted to Truth Social on Saturday, Sullivan is “leading substantially.”

The president’s method was simple. “When you add Daniel (3,600, 1.68%) into Dan, and Gerald Heikes (4,846, 2.27%), Senator Dan Sullivan is up by thousands of Votes,” he wrote, according to the Daily Beast. “I don’t know what takes so long to announce his win. This should be immediate!”

Daniel is Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., the retired Petersburg schoolteacher who is also on the ballot, under the same name, as a separate candidate. Heikes is a third candidate, and also not Dan Sullivan.

“Anyone voting for Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr. … is a vote for Senator Dan Sullivan,” the president continued. “The Alaska Race is OVER. Dan Sullivan WON, BY A LOT!”

This reporter ran the president’s method through the model. The model accepted it without complaint, as the model accepts everything. Combining the two Dan Sullivans and Heikes into a single candidate produces a single candidate at 51.83%, a clear majority, and a clean chart. It also produces a Dan Sullivan who is simultaneously a sitting senator, a retired schoolteacher and Gerald Heikes. The model has flagged this as a rounding issue.

Alaska has a different method. It uses ranked-choice voting. If no candidate tops 50% once every ballot is in, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots move to whichever candidate each voter ranked next, and the counting repeats until somebody has a majority. A vote moves to the candidate the voter ranked, not the candidate the president ranked. The state has scheduled that tabulation for Nov. 18 and plans updates to the first-choice count on Nov. 10 and Nov. 13 before it.

Saturday was not the first post. On Thursday the president proposed the same reallocation on Truth Social and called it the only option. “There is no other fair solution!” he wrote, according to the Daily Beast.

He has support inside the building. Stephen Miller, promoted to White House chief of staff on Friday, has called the Alaska race “one of the most egregious attacks we have seen on the integrity of American elections,” according to the Daily Beast. The race is a vote count. It has been a vote count since Tuesday.

The Division of Elections did not adopt the president’s totals, which leaves Alaska in the unusual position of having two sets of results for one race: one that adds up and one that adds up faster. Polls closed six days ago. The model, consulted again, reports that the official count is the one that will be certified, and that it is the only count in Alaska that requires ballots.

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