Mary Peltola’s campaign declared victory in Alaska’s Senate race on Saturday, and the Justice Department’s own lawsuit now explains why the claim holds.
- The count. Peltola has 138,240 first-choice votes, 49.8 percent, to Sen. Dan Sullivan’s 127,828, or 46.1 percent, in Saturday morning’s tally. That is a 10,412-vote lead with roughly 10,000 to 11,500 ballots still out.
- The call. The Associated Press has not called it. NBC News’ Decision Desk rates it “likely” Democratic, which means at least 95 percent confidence, and Alaska is the only Senate race of the cycle the desk has not called.
- The stakes. A Peltola win gives Democrats a 56-44 Senate majority next year.
- The challenge. A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s suit to block certification on November 1. The Justice Department appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
Everyone covering the declaration is reading the margin. Nobody has run the lawsuit’s own test against it. We did, and the test fails on the government’s own terms.
The Statement
“There is no mathematical path for Sullivan to win this race,” the campaign said Saturday, adding that when the remaining votes are counted, “Mary will decisively be elected as Alaska’s next United States Senator.”
Campaign manager Cheryl Bruce put it more plainly: “Alaskans have spoken, and it is clear that in the coming days Mary Peltola will be officially elected,” she told the Anchorage Daily News.
Sullivan has not conceded. Newsweek asked his campaign for comment and had no reply.
What the Justice Department Asked For
The complaint, filed October 22, set a condition rather than alleging a fraud. Certification should wait, the department said, “if: (1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan” and ranked choice “played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election,” Votebeat reported.
President Trump claimed it. “I’m the one that said do it,” he told reporters.
Read that condition closely. It is a hypothetical built to trigger only if the Republican loses, and only if the loss is small.
Running the Government’s Own Test
So here it is, with the arithmetic shown. The figures are Saturday morning’s count; the transfer rates for Gerald Heikes’ ballots come from FairVote’s analysis of the cast vote record.
| Scenario | Peltola | Sen. Sullivan | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actual first-choice count, Saturday | 138,240 | 127,828 | Peltola by 10,412 |
| DOJ test, step 1: all 4,560 Daniel J. Sullivan votes handed to the senator | 138,240 | 132,388 | Peltola by 5,852 |
| DOJ test, step 2: Heikes’ 5,885 ballots transfer at FairVote’s rates (42% Sullivan, 18% Peltola) | 139,299 | 134,860 | Peltola by about 4,439 |
| Trump’s Truth Social demand: every vote for both minor candidates to the senator | 138,240 | 138,273 | Sullivan by 33 |
| FairVote’s ranked-choice projection from the ballot data | 51.5% | 48.5% | Peltola by 8,034 |
The second and third rows are the lawsuit, exactly as written. Even handing the senator every single vote cast for the other Dan Sullivan, a gift no court would ever order, Peltola still wins by thousands.
The 33 Votes
The fourth row is the one Trump wanted. Last week he demanded on Truth Social that the votes for both minor candidates simply “be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan.” When we added that up on November 10, that arithmetic put Sullivan ahead by 7,809.
Four days of counting later, it puts him ahead by 33. That is before a single one of the remaining ballots, which are mostly from Anchorage and Southeast Alaska, is added.
And it was never a real number. No statute lets a president reassign ballots, and the Daniel J. Sullivan voters ranked Peltola second more often than the senator, the Anchorage Daily News found in the ballot data. FairVote’s count of those ballots: 1,534 moved to Peltola, 1,025 to the senator.
Can She Skip Ranked Choice Entirely
Possibly. Her 49.8 percent share implies about 277,600 ballots counted, write-ins included.
Add 10,000 to 11,500 more and she needs roughly 55 percent of what is left to clear 50 percent outright. That is close to what she has been winning in the late absentee and early batches.
If she falls short, the ranked-choice tabulation runs November 18, the last day overseas ballots can arrive. FairVote’s projection has her winning that round too.
Either road ends at the same place.
The Court Already Said No
The suit has not gone well for the government. Alaska called it legally baseless in its filings, and on November 1 the federal court granted the motion to dismiss.
The Justice Department filed its notice of appeal the same day. Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of Alaska asked the Ninth Circuit on November 9 to affirm without full briefing, and former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer filed a brief backing them on November 13.
That is the first attempt by this administration to block certification of a 2026 midterm result. It is losing.
Where We Stand
We think Sullivan should concede once the count closes, and the Justice Department should drop the appeal.
The lawsuit was a tripwire wired to one outcome. It never asked whether any voter was confused. It asked only whether the Republican lost. Now its own trigger condition is not met, and keeping the case alive serves one purpose: to give a future, closer race a precedent for federal interference in certification.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer floated not seating Peltola before a single vote was counted. The plan was always to contest the outcome, not the ballots.
Alaskans used a system they kept by referendum, ranked their choices, and the ballots say what they say.
The Last Seat of the Cycle
Alaska closes out a Senate map that ran blue from Maine to Texas. It also arrives on the same day the state’s governor’s race was called for Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, in a state Trump carried three times.
The final question is no longer who won Alaska. It is whether the Ninth Circuit lets the administration keep pretending the question is open.