How worried should the GOP be about two Dan Sullivans on the ballot in Alaska?

Two Dan Sullivans on Alaska’s Ballot: How Worried Should the GOP Be?

Healfromzero.com – How worried should the GOP be when the very name printed on a ballot becomes a vector for lost votes? That is the question now gripping Alaska Republican strategists as the state’s single Senate seat enters its final stretch. The general-election ballot will carry two candidates spelled identically: incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan and Dan J. Sullivan, a former classroom teacher with no prior elected-office experience. In a state where ranked-choice voting determines the winner, the collision is not merely cosmetic — it is a structural risk that could tip a race already central to the Senate majority calculation.

Primary Results and the Shape of the Field

The all-party primary held last week confirmed the overlap is real, if numerically contained. Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee, led the field at 48.2 percent. Senator Dan Sullivan followed at 42.6 percent. Dan J. Sullivan, the former teacher, pulled in roughly 2.5 percent and locked a top-four finish. Two remaining candidates each registered 1.1 percent, leaving the final elimination slot unresolved heading into the general election.

Under a plurality system, a minor candidate sharing an incumbent’s exact name would be an obvious liability: mis-marked ballots, booth confusion, and recount disputes would all be foreseeable. Alaska’s ranked-choice framework changes the mechanics. The operative question shifts from “who gets the most first-choice votes” to “when Dan J. Sullivan is eliminated in the sequential tally, where do his preferences migrate?”

The Ranked-Choice Argument and Where It Breaks Down

Scott Kendall, an Alaska attorney who helped shepherd the state’s 2020 adoption of ranked-choice voting, published an op-ed this month contending that the system largely defuses the name-collision threat. His reasoning is mechanical: should Dan J. Sullivan’s backers list Senator Sullivan as a subsequent preference ahead of Peltola, those votes transfer intact once the minor candidate drops out. No votes vanish; no confusion outlasts the first elimination round.

The assumption embedded in that argument is that voters will reliably complete their preference rankings. Alaska’s short electoral record under ranked-choice voting suggests otherwise.

Kendall himself concedes the limitation. A meaningful share of Alaska voters either stop after their first choice or simply do not grasp the process well enough to fill in backups. When their preferred candidate is eliminated, the ballot exhausts — it stops counting toward the final head-to-head. Given the state’s limited track record, this is not a marginal sliver of ballots.

What Past Elections Reveal About Ballot Exhaustion

The most instructive recent data point comes from the 2024 U.S. House contest. Democrat Eric Hafner drew approximately 1.1 percent of first-choice votes. Logic would predict his backers, once eliminated, would flow to Peltola, the only other Democrat. In practice, roughly one-third of Hafner’s supporters exhausted their ballots outright. Another third did rank Peltola next. The remainder scattered across Republican Nick Begich or a third-party candidate. The net effect: of the 1.1 percent who chose Hafner, only about 0.4 percent worth of that preference ultimately reached Peltola.

The pattern recurs in the two 2022 U.S. House races — a special election and the November general — both featuring Peltola alongside Begich and former Governor Sarah Palin, the GOP’s 2008 vice-presidential nominee. In each contest, approximately one-quarter of voters initially selected Begich. Each time he was eliminated, more than 20 percent of his backers exhausted their ballots rather than designate an alternative. In aggregate, that translated into five to six percent of the entire electorate losing their ballot in a single elimination round.

Even among Begich voters who did rank a backup, the destination was inconsistent. In the special election, only about half filtered down to Palin, the other Republican. In November, two-thirds did. Part of that gap likely reflects Palin’s polarizing presence; some Begich supporters simply preferred to let their ballot expire rather than endorse either major candidate.

Across the state’s 2022 and 2024 federal elections, the average figure is telling: roughly 28 percent of a candidate’s voters failed to rank any backup when that candidate was eliminated. Of the remainder, only about half selected the preference one would logically expect — a same-party candidate or someone ideologically adjacent to the initial choice.

Applying the Math to November

How worried should the GOP be, then, when the numbers are applied to the Dan J. Sullivan scenario? If his 2.5 percent of first-choice votes behave like Hafner’s or Begich’s, roughly 28 percent — about 0.7 percent of the total electorate — will exhaust immediately upon his elimination. Of the remaining 1.8 percent, only about half will flow to the logically expected destination. That leaves perhaps 0.9 percent of the electorate whose votes could migrate unpredictably, some of them toward Peltola, some toward a third-party candidate, and some simply lost.

In a race where the margin between Peltola and Senator Sullivan is measured in single-digit percentage points, even a fraction of a percent of misdirected or exhausted votes can be decisive. The question of how worried the GOP should be ultimately hinges not on whether confusion exists at the booth, but on whether the ranked-choice tally will absorb that confusion or amplify it into a net vote loss for the incumbent.

Frequently Asked Questions

How worried should the GOP be about ballot exhaustion in this specific race? Based on Alaska’s own 2022 and 2024 data, approximately 28 percent of a minor candidate’s voters fail to rank a backup. Applied to Dan J. Sullivan’s estimated 2.5 percent share, that means roughly 0.7 percent of the electorate could lose their ballot in one round — a non-trivial number in a close Senate contest.

Can voters correct the problem at the booth? Yes. Any voter who ranks Dan J. Sullivan first can list Senator Sullivan (or any other candidate) as a subsequent preference. If done correctly, the vote transfers rather than exhausts. The risk is concentrated among voters who leave the ballot incomplete.

Does the name collision affect only first-choice votes? No. The collision creates confusion at every stage of the sequential elimination. Voters scanning the ballot for their second or third preference may select the wrong “Dan Sullivan,” introducing errors that compound beyond the initial elimination round.

Is there a precedent for a same-name collision in a ranked-choice election? Alaska has not previously faced two candidates sharing an identical name in a single contest. The closest analogues are the minor-candidate elimination scenarios documented in 2022 and 2024, where exhaustion rates of 20–30 percent were observed.