In Alaska’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race, challenger Mary Peltola jumps to slim early lead

Alaska does this every cycle. Half the precincts report, somebody's up by a hair, and everyone acts like the race is decided when it absolutely isn't. Dan Sullivan trailing Mary Peltola by less than a point with the count barely started isn't news, it's Tuesday night arithmetic. Anyone who's watched Alaska count votes before knows rural precincts and mail ballots come in late and they tend to break differently than the early returns. This one is going to take days, maybe longer, and it should.

What's actually worth paying attention to is why this race is close at all. Sullivan is an incumbent in a state that's supposed to be solidly red down the ballot, and a Democrat who already proved she can win statewide in a weird ranked-choice environment is right on his heels. That's not nothing. Alaska Republicans have had chances to make these races boring and instead keep handing Democrats openings through ranked-choice confusion and split coalitions. Voters there have shown they'll cross party lines when they feel like the GOP candidate didn't earn the seat outright.

None of that means Sullivan is losing. It means the state party needs to stop being surprised every two years that this happens. If half the ballots left to count come from areas that traditionally favor Republicans, this flips back fast. But if the same pattern from the House race repeats itself, national Republicans should be asking harder questions about how Alaska runs its elections and why the same vulnerabilities keep showing up.