Forget the Second Dan Sullivan. Eric Hafner Was Alaska’s Bigger Spoiler - Newsweek

For months, Alaska's ballot was a fight over who belonged on it.

A retired Petersburg teacher named Dan J. Sullivan filed to run against Senator Dan S. Sullivan, setting off a legal and political battle over whether the similar names could confuse voters. The Alaska Supreme Court ultimately allowed him to remain on the ballot.

The controversy grew from there. A New York Times report tied Dan J. Sullivan’s recruitment to a Democratic operative, which the campaign of former Representative Mary Peltola, the Democrat challenging Senator Sullivan, denied, while President Donald Trump warned the similar names would mislead Alaskans.

In the latest count as of publication, the namesake was running last with just 1.7 percent.

The much bigger surprise was in Alaska's U.S. House race, where Eric Hafner, a Democrat serving a 20-year federal prison sentence who has never lived in Alaska, took 7.3 percent. That is more than four times the namesake's total. His own state party had asked voters not to support him, backing independent Bill Hill instead.

For comparison, consider the size of Hafner’s vote. As of publication, Republican Representative Nick Begich led Hill by 9 points, 49.6 percent to 40.4 percent. Combining Hafner’s first-choice total with Hill’s would narrow that gap to under 2 points: 49.6 to 47.7, or about 4,100 votes out of more than 213,000. That doesn’t tell us where his voters would have gone without him. It shows how large a share of the vote he drew, in a race where state Democrats had lined up behind Hill.

The Sullivan namesake got the scrutiny. Hafner drew more votes, and under Alaska's voting rules, those votes may never be counted beyond the first choice.

Alaska’s top four primary finishers advance to a ranked-choice general election. If no one wins a majority of first choices, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and those ballots move to each voter’s next choice, round by round, until someone crosses 50 percent.

Supporters say this blunts the classic spoiler effect, because a vote for a long shot can still move to a stronger candidate. There is a catch, though. A ballot moves only when its candidate is eliminated, and the count stops the moment someone crosses 50 percent. A minor candidate's voters can sit in the first round and never be heard from again.

Unofficial, 400 of 403 precincts, Alaska Division of Elections, updated 5:11 p.m. ET Wednesday.

On its face, this is a 9-point Republican win. Hill, a first-time candidate, became the left’s choice in the race. Democrat Matt Schultz quit and endorsed him, and a national Democratic group spent to elect him.

This is where Hafner’s 15,550 votes may get stuck. Begich is fewer than 1,100 votes short of a majority. McDermott’s roughly 5,800 ballots are among the first to be redistributed. If those push Begich past 50 percent, the count ends there. Hafner is never eliminated, and none of his ballots reach a second choice. That reflects the state’s latest unofficial count and could change as new results come in.

The namesake’s 3,600 votes are a small number, but the Senate margin is smaller. Peltola leads by 637 votes, and neither leader has a majority. That means the namesake’s ballots will be redistributed, and so will those of Gerald Heikes, a perennial candidate. For all the legal fighting over him, the namesake drew fewer votes than Heikes. Because Heikes is running as a Republican, his transfers could favor Sullivan. How either man’s voters actually ranked the field won’t be known until the November 18 tabulation.

The numbers above are probably the reddest version of this election. Alaska counts slowly. Election-night results usually reflect about 70 percent of the vote, and a consultant told Alaska Public Media he has seen late shifts of about 4 points. Early ballots cast after October 29 were held out of the election-night count, and registered Democrats voted early at a disproportionately high rate. According to the Alaska Beacon, results were expected to lean more Republican than the final tally.

This has happened before. In 2024, the measure to repeal ranked-choice voting led on election night, then lost by 743 votes once late ballots were counted.

On the same ballot, Alaskans voted on whether to repeal ranked-choice voting for the second time in two years. The Alaska Republican Party campaigned heavily for Ballot Measure 2. After the 2024 measure failed, party leaders called repeal one of their top goals. Trump endorsed it in April. The Repeal Now campaign pointed to the two Sullivans as evidence that the system produces absurd outcomes. As of the state's 5:11 p.m. ET update, "no" led 106,040 to 98,460, or 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent. That is a 7,580-vote gap, with many ballots still uncounted.

That’s the irony. This year, the ballots most likely to move lean right: McDermott’s in the House and Heikes’ in the Senate. The system Republicans are trying to scrap could end Begich’s race before Hafner’s ballots ever move. It could also give Sullivan the second choices he needs to overtake Peltola.

Alaska spent a summer fighting over a name on the ballot. The namesake will likely be eliminated early, and his ballots will be redistributed. Hafner drew four times as many votes, and his may never be counted beyond the first choice.

The state updates its count on November 10 and November 13, runs the ranked-choice tabulation November 18, and aims to certify results by November 25.

All figures are unofficial results as of the state’s 5:11 p.m. ET update and will change.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Steven Frank and Edward T. Cummins