Peltola ahead in two Alaska polls; our model still leans to Sullivan

Two new surveys of the Alaska Senate race both show Mary Peltola ahead of Dan Sullivan. A Data for Progress poll of 605 likely voters, fielded July 28 to August 4, has Peltola at 47 percent and Sullivan at 41 percent. A second ballot test from the same Data for Progress survey of 605 likely voters, fielded July 28 to August 4, has Peltola at 53 percent and Sullivan at 47 percent. The gap is six points in both.

Those numbers changed our forecast. Our model now gives Peltola a 34 in 100 chance of winning the seat and Sullivan a 66 percent chance. In our previous run, earlier the same afternoon, the figures were 23 percent for Peltola and 77 percent for Sullivan. Our mean margin moved from R+4.9 to R+2.8.

The movement is real but partial. Our model still puts the more likely outcome on Sullivan's side, and it does not treat the two polls as decisive: they sit against a prior that has favored the Republican, and both come from the same pollster and the same fieldwork. Our 5th-to-95th percentile range for the margin now runs from R+13.8 to D+8.3, wide enough to include a comfortable Sullivan win and a clear Peltola one.

The change matters more to the chamber arithmetic than to any single reading of Alaska. Our model gives Democrats a 47 percent chance of winning Senate control and Republicans 53 percent, with a mean of 50.1 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats; Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to their side. On that math, a seat our model rated at 23 percent for the Democrat a few hours ago and rates at 34 percent now is one of the places where the difference between those two thresholds gets settled. Our generic-ballot average stands at D+6.7 across 26 polls.