President Donald Trump has called for the votes cast for two other candidates in Alaska's unsettled Senate race to be awarded to the Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan, according to WP Wiadomości. The president made the argument in a post on Truth Social on Thursday, 5 November 2026, framing it as the only fair way to close out a contest that remains undecided. Democrat Mary Peltola, a former congresswoman, currently leads the count.
Trump named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and Gerald Heikes, whose names appeared on the same ballot as the sitting senator. In his post he referred to "Fake Dan Sullivan" and described the second candidate as a stand-in planted by Democrats, arguing that their votes should be transferred to the "REAL Dan Sullivan" so the race could be called. He added that no other honest outcome existed, WP Wiadomości reports.
The two minor candidates drew small shares of the vote. With roughly 74 percent of ballots counted, Peltola stood at 48.2 percent and Dan Sullivan at 47.9 percent — a gap of 637 votes. Heikes had 2.3 percent and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. 1.7 percent, according to the figures cited by WP Wiadomości.
Why it matters
The intervention puts a sitting president squarely behind a demand to reassign ballots in a live election count, rather than waiting for the state's process to run its course. Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, a system that already includes a mechanism for reallocating support from lower-placed candidates. Trump's request would shortcut that mechanism by moving the votes directly, and it lands while state and federal prosecutors are examining how the two minor candidates came to be on the ballot.
The race is one of the last pieces of a national picture that has otherwise tilted strongly toward the Democrats. According to WP Wiadomości, the party has secured control of the Senate with at least 54 of 100 seats, and holds a majority in the House with at least 247 seats to the Republicans' 153. An NBC News projection cited in the report suggests Democrats could finish with 259 House seats, which would be their widest margin since 1990. Thirty-five House contests remain uncalled.
How Alaska counts its votes
Under the state's ranked-choice system, a candidate must clear 50 percent to win outright. If no one does, the preferences marked by supporters of the third- and fourth-placed candidates are applied to the top two, and those secondary choices decide the outcome.
That is the step Trump wants to skip. Analyses differ on what the remaining ballots hold. Work by The New York Times and the VoteHub centre, as cited by WP Wiadomości, suggests the uncounted votes may favour Peltola. An analysis by the Alaska Beacon, also cited in the report, found that Dan Sullivan could pick up around 860 additional votes from supporters of Heikes and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. once preferences are applied.
Governor Mike Dunleavy said on Thursday that a complete tally could take time. He said a large batch of ballots would be reviewed on Tuesday and another the following Friday, per WP Wiadomości.
An inquiry into the minor candidates
Federal and state prosecutors are investigating the candidacies of Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and Heikes. The New York Times reported that both men were encouraged by Democrats to run in order to draw votes away from the incumbent, according to WP Wiadomości. The report notes that such tactics have been used before by both parties and are not in themselves unlawful. The Alaska Supreme Court allowed Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. to appear on the ballot.
Trump's post did not address the pending inquiry. It focused on the arithmetic, asserting that combining the two candidates' tallies with the senator's would put him comfortably ahead of Peltola.
A second race still open
Alaska is one of two states where the Senate result has not been settled. In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom, a prosecutor, leads Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by 724 votes, a margin of 0.1 percentage points, WP Wiadomości reports. Analyses cited in the report give Colom the better chance of holding on.
The Senate's final composition is therefore still incomplete, even though Democratic control of the chamber is already assured.
What to watch: the next batches of Alaska ballots, due to be reviewed on Tuesday and the following Friday, and whether the preference count begins before the prosecutors' inquiry reports.
