Polls Now Forecast Total GOP Domination in Alaska in 2026

Alaska politics are more than a little weird. They always were, but ranked-choice voting (RCV) really screwed things up. That bad idea was almost certainly part of the cause of Mary Peltola winning one term as Alaska's at-large representative in the House, and for Senator Liza Murkowski (R-AK)'s continued presence in the Senate.

This year, in the 2026 elections, Alaska's Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) is up for reelection, as is our current Representative Nick Begich III (AK-At Large). Our current governor, Mike Dunleavy, is term-limited, so we'll be electing a new governor as well. And, finally, an RCV repeal will be on the ballot again. But now, a polling aggregate company, Pollsmax, is giving us some room for hope: Their examination of current polling is predicting a Republican sweep of the three offices.

Pollsmax uses a model that runs 100,000 simulations based on several factors, including national and state polling results, race ratings, and previous elections. Here are their predictions:

Senate: Dan Sullivan wins over Mary Peltola by 5.8 points. These two are almost certainly the top two ballot choices to come out of the primary, and Senator Sullivan has pretty decent approval ratings in Alaska - and he has the advantage of incumbency. That being the case, I can forgive him for flouting Alaska tradition and remaining beardless.

House of Representatives: Nick Begich III has, according to the model, an almost 90 percent chance of emerging victorious. Not only is he lacking a serious challenger at the moment, he also has high name recognition, the power of incumbency, and Alaskans like the guy. Because of that, I'll show my same forbearance over his beardlessness.

Governor: Republican candidate Bernadette Wilson is projected to win over the likely Democrat front-runner, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, by over 10 points. She has an 85.5 percent chance of victory. I might note that Bernadette Wilson has been burning up shoe leather like crazy, crisscrossing the state, appearing at dozens of local functions, and just talking to people. And it's a big, big state. She's putting in a lot of effort, and that always helps.

Superior Court Deems AK Candidate Dan Sullivan Must Be on the Ballot; Sen. Sullivan's Battle Continues

I haven't seen any polling on the repeal of RCV, which will be on the ballot in November; a YES vote is a vote for repeal of RCV and a return to the traditional partisan primary, one voter, one vote system. The last attempt at repeal failed by only a bit over 700 votes out of over 320,000 cast. The pro-repeal side, also, was outspent by a wide margin, with much of the money coming from outside Alaska.

If we can do this, repeal RCV, then that would come just in time for Senator Murkowski's reelection in 2028, and there are rumors that Governor Dunleavy may mount a primary challenge to unseat Princess Lisa. From the viewpoint of this Alaskan, that would be great.

Now, the disclaimers: Repeal issue or no, this fall, the 2026 election will still happen under RCV. That makes this (and any) election all that much harder to predict, even with the most sophisticated polling and models on the planet. There's just too much that can go wrong, and RCV is inherently more complicated and even confusing; in the first RCV election here in the Great Land, in 2022, I personally overheard at least two people discussing it while actually in line to vote, and they both said almost exactly the same thing with regards to the House race: "I don't care what they put on the ballot, I'm just voting for (Nick/Sarah) and that's it." That kind of thing can really screw up an election.

We seem to have figured it out in 2024. Let's hope we can figure it out this time. It's early, and polling models are too often worth every penny we pay for them, but it's fun to read nonetheless - and we can sure hope they'll end up being right.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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