The betting markets are confident of this one. Why?
One thing looks clear. This is going to ranked voting. And we may not know for weeks.
Questions of the Day
- Who gets 3,583 votes for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr?
- Who gets 4,821votes for Gerald L. Heikes?
At first glance I would have thought Daniel S. Sullivan, the incumbent. However, I am extremely reluctant to go against betting results like the following.
Alaska Senate Betting Odds
It gets more confusing when you look at votes counted and where they are expected.
Alaska Voting Districts
Note. I do not have all 40 districts.
Current Totals by District
I asked Grok to apportion those seats based on current percentages.
From Grok
Here’s the math on the districts you provided, assuming current percentages hold for the remaining ballots in each one.
Projected lead in these districts: Sullivan +~1925.
The prediction markets are pricing Mary Peltola as a heavy favorite (~93% on both Polymarket and Kalshi) because of how Alaska’s remaining ballots historically break, not because the current first-choice numbers are already decisive.
The Key Historical Pattern
In Peltola’s previous statewide races (the 2022 special House election and the 2024 House race), she gained 2–3 percentage points between election-night reporting and the final first-choice totals. The late ballots (rural, mail, and absentee) systematically favored her.
Traders are applying the same pattern here. The remaining ballots are disproportionately from rural districts that show up as deep blue on the maps you shared (districts in the 37–40 range and similar western/northern areas, where she is already running 60–78%). Even a modest continuation of the historical rural/absentee lean is enough to expand a 600-vote lead into several thousand votes before ranked-choice voting (RCV) is applied.
How Ranked Voting Fits In
Alaska’s RCV tabulation (scheduled for November 18 once all eligible ballots are processed) only matters if neither candidate reaches 50% on first choices—which is still the expected path.Gerald Heikes (~2.3%) is expected to transfer mostly to the incumbent Sullivan.
The other Dan J. Sullivan’s votes will split.Markets are betting that the first-choice margin after the remaining rural-heavy ballots are counted will be large enough that even a strong Heikes transfer does not reverse the outcome. They are pricing the final result (after RCV), not just the current first-choice snapshot.
Bottom line
The 93% figure is the market’s assessment that the outstanding ballots are skewed toward her based on geography and her past performance, and That expected movement will produce a first-choice cushion that survives RCV.
Believe the Betting Markets
The markets are saying the structural factors that have helped Peltola before are likely to do so again.
I side with the betting markets on this one. My second comment is Nate Silver got this right, not me.
I did not think that second Dan Sullivan effort would matter. Now I think it backfired, yet not quite enough to matter.
We may not know for weeks.
My Bottom Line
I now expect Alaska to break for Democrats.
If Mississippi breaks for Democrats, as I also expect, that would be a Senate pickup of nine.
Wow!
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Twenty-three percent of votes have yet to be tallied. Even when they are, the narrow margin separating the candidates means that the outcome may be decided not at the state’s polling sites but through the mail via absentee and questioned ballots.
In the previous midterm congressional election four years ago, Alaska officials said they received 9,143 in-person absentee ballots and 8,009 questioned ballots. Two years ago, in the presidential election, state officials reported receiving 18,158 in-person absentee ballots and 15,138 questioned ballots. Voters can ask for a mail-in ballot and still vote in person, so the number of outstanding votes in the state’s general elections in 2022 and 2024 is unclear.
The Justice Department has sent a target letter to prominent Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias asking about his possible involvement in petitioning a retired teacher by the name of Dan J. Sullivan to run for Alaska’s Senate seat, according to the Associated Press.
Trump committed to making America Great Again, and he’s done exactly that! Now – let’s start building a pathway out of the Middle East and endless and criminal wars, starting with cutting Bibi’s funding and weapons shipments.
The Rapeublicans got organized and voted/supported El-Sayed in the Michigan primary because they were sure he was unelectable. Stevens would have been a moderate choice, but now she is politically irrelevant.
I am eager for Sunday’s coffee clutch reaction report. Eagerly await it, don’t let us down.
She’s as creepy as Vivek, and a turncoat.
Hold on thar – some of them votes were meant for Mary J Peltola – a different Peltola – a fur trapper out of Alaganik.
Colom in Mississippi is now up by 1,138 votes. The Confederacy is dying.
Former congressman Bob Good (R-Virginia), who chaired the caucus in 2024, wrote on X that Republicans need to acknowledge that “Trump was and is the problem.”
Good lost the 2024 Republican primary to John McGuire, a Trump-endorsed candidate.
“We need to pick up the pieces of the conservative movement, and fight for a renewed Republican Party with principles that stands for something besides Trump. He has destroyed the party and he lost this election,” Good wrote.
The Republicans went along with Trump and protected him even though they knew he was a pedophile and criminal. Because – that is what they are: accomplices and enablers.
Let the party of Musk and Trump rot and become fertilizer.
There was once a political party in the United States of America called the Whigs. They split over the 1850’s version of ICE: slavery. Greg Abbott used to gleefully fill buses and airplanes with human beings, and ship them to blue cities. He thought it was great fun to run over Democrats with his meanness to fellow human beings. And I saw that and I said to myself: Himmler; he’s a Himmler. And apparently a whole bunch of other Texans saw the same thing. Nobody is ever going to forget what Trump and the conservatives have done.
The problem is the “conservative movement”, at least as it exists in the US, is a dead end. The last conservative to be elected was GW Bush, and he had to have the Supreme Court get him across the line. Fiscal conservatism died with Reagan’s tax cuts. Free market capitalism died with deindustrialization, wage stagnation and asset speculation. Militarism died with Iran and the War on Terror. The only piece left is evangelicalism, which died with Donald Trump, pedophilia, and blatant corruption.
The GOP needs to find something positive to represent. I’d happily vote for real fiscal conservatism (actually raise taxes to get rid of most of the deficit) and dramatic de-federalization (move most programs to the states), but that only gets them one vote.
Holmes should have pointed that out a long time ago.
What is needed, however, is not a conservative movement, but a non-ideological movement, one tied to the needs of the average frustrated American and not the average frustrated megadonor.
So, let’s say the Grok estimate of net +1925 for Sullivan is roughly correct. That’s around 1%, which more than closes the current gap of 650 votes in favor of Peltola right now. So if the remaining late ballots give her an additional 2% (big if) for the first preference vote, she might be ahead but might not clear the 50% thresh hold. Only then, if I understand Mish correctly, would the #2 choices in the RCV count be added.
Here is where the betting markets seem to be indulging in total speculation. We have no way of knowing how those #2 votes are going to go, right?
I think we are getting way over our Alaska cross-country skis on this.
That said, I hope Mish is right.
I’m crossing my fingers on the Mississippi Senate vote too.
+2 more in the Dem Senate column would be great news, but we may need to wait a week or more for that!
The area outside of the Anchorage-Eagle River-Palmer-Wasilla corridor, which probably mostly counted by now, is deep blue. Lots of uncounted votes.
The problem with my chart and totals was it does not have all 40 districts, just 18.
I could not find all the totals. Someone on the betting markets does have them!
Never underestimate Mish. He always knows.
The entire mess, this Election (I call these days: “ERECTION DAYS.”) – – is a sham. The party leadership decided this and Trump already knew he would “Fail.” This is leading up to something strange and potentially BIGGER than we can expect.
Trump has simply been too obviously out-of-control to NOT have a bigger and more pronounced PUSH-BACK other than ERECTION DAY VOTING.
This is a PLANNED OUTCOME. The leadership of both parties WANTED THIS. They could not be any more obvious.
Ridiculous.
You got some bad Kool aid there.
This is called “Reductionist Fallacy”.
Look it up.
MAGA delusional CLOWN for sure.
Take your meds grandpa, it’s getting sad.
“Trump has simply been too obviously out-of-control to NOT have a bigger and more pronounced PUSH-BACK.”
Nah. Democrats have been pushing back as hard as they can but don’t have the power to do anything. Republicans in Congress know they will get voted out if they pushed back. The problem is the criminally stupid Trump voters who support him regardless, a group that makes up the majority of the Republican Party. This is exactly what happens when a politician (Trump) creates a new party base of the most vile, racist, evangelical, evil people in the country.
” The leadership of both parties WANTED THIS. They could not be any more obvious.”
What is your evidence for this “obvious” fact?
Pro tip: ALL CAPS does not turn a statement into evidence.
Nytimes points out that you have to go back to 1976 and the fallout of Watergate to see a party get wiped out as bad as yesterday.
Some red voters’ revulsion over Trump’s big broken promises might not be as durable and deep as the Nixon era, which had such a long run-up through Watergate. I think this is more about prices than anything. I don’t think those people are embracing the full Dem agenda at all.
Congressional hearings in the wake of Nixon were historic, not least for uncovering a lot of weird Cold War stuff. (Sam “‘Momo” Giancana and “Handsome Johnny” Roselli couldn’t make it to their hearings.)
In the 70s, just the president cussing was enough to shock people. Now the guy drops the F bomb and discusses men’s asses without a blink, mocks disabled people and calls reporters sick to their faces. We’ll see what is needed to shock and disturb people now.
Nothing less than the Epstein files showing the elites drinking the blood of children.
Anything else will be just a shrug of the shoulders.
Evangelicals will find something in the Bible to say it is a good thing and everyone should do it!
The electorate know Trump and his crony’s are becoming wealthier while they become poorer. This will not change in the next 2 years.
The demographic with the strongest shift blue is men age 18-29. That may leave a mark.
Not surprising, when the GOP has expanded from destroying their future to destroying their present as well.
i know lots of young men in that age group. the rural guys don’t bother voting. too lazy. the city guys vote. more educated and engaged. i know tons of these young fellas. city to burbs, they vote, the rural guys, never. was around them all week.
The guys who might die in some meaningless war…how strange.
Dems will win both MS and AK. Murkowski will caucus with Dems.
Been under 700 for over 12 hours. That 4% was evident then.
Mish, that Mississippi Senate race is a statistical dead heat. Considering the conservative nature of that state, the incumbent is more likely to win. I guess we’ll see how much further the rebuke of Trump will go!
The betting markets show an equally strong signal for team (D) in Mississippi as in Alaska. I imagine Mish is thinking about that as well.
Correct – I side with betting markets.
Considering the 30+ year history and nature of Texas, no one thought it would go blue in one shot.
Over the last decade, more than 700,000 to 800,000 people have moved from California to Texas, according to U.S. Census Bureau data and real estate analyses.
Key figures regarding the migration trend include:
• Annual Totals: On average, roughly 68,700 to 100,000 Californians make the move to Texas each year, with recent Census figures showing 77,161 people relocating from California to Texas in 2024 alone.
Those people that move to Texas aren’t the liberals though.
Voter Registration by Party
How many registered Democrats, Republicans, and Independents are in California?
Democratic44.6%
Republican25.0%
Independent27.3%
Other3.2%
Party Registered Voters % of Total
Democratic 10,089,599 44.6%
Republican 5,660,070 25.0%
Independent 6,168,695 27.3%
Other 715,089 3.2%
If you really believe that, you have an opportunity to make a lot of money by playing against the market odds.
No recount in Mississippi. They can challenge the decisions of election officials on either including or excluding ballots, but that is not easy,