Alaska · Governor
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · margins and probabilities are for Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins
Who is running?
Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (Democratic), Bernadette Wilson (Republican), Dave Bronson (Republican), TBD (no party recorded). The margin below is Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.
The race, in brief
Alaska elects a governor and lieutenant governor on November 3, 2026, by ranked-choice vote after a nonpartisan top-four primary held on August 18, 2026. Incumbent Mike Dunleavy is term-limited, so the seat is open. The state profile records a median age of 35.6 and a college share of 0.3.
Four tickets are on the general ballot: Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a former state representative (2013–2023), with Zac Johnson; and three Republicans, Bernadette Wilson, a waste management company founder, with Mike Shower; Dave Bronson, former mayor of Anchorage, with Josh Church; and Treg Taylor, former Attorney General, with Candice English. In the primary Kreiss-Tomkins took 22.5% and Democrat Tom Begich 20.8%; Begich then withdrew and endorsed Kreiss-Tomkins, letting fifth-place Taylor (7.3%) advance. Taylor's certification was declined on August 31 and restored on September 4.
Raters differ: Cook, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News and Sabato's Crystal Ball list Tossup; Inside Elections lists R; RealClearPolitics and Silver Bulletin list Flip. Statewide polls are recorded: co/efficient (R), September 14–17, 2026, had Kreiss-Tomkins 43%, Wilson 20%, Bronson 17%, Taylor 6%; Fabrizio Ward (R)/Impact Research (D) for AARP, September 8–11, 2026, had Kreiss-Tomkins 40% first choice and 55% to Wilson's 45% in the final ranked round.
The input carries no model forecast for this race: the forecast list is empty. The facts' candidate list also does not match the text (it names Dan Sullivan as the Republican incumbent and Mary Peltola as the Democrat), so it is not relied on here.
The facts, each beside its sentence
Incumbent governor Mike Dunleavy is term-limited and ineligible to seek a third consecutive term.
Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, former state representative from the 35th district (2013–2023) ** Running mate: Zac Johnson
*Dave Bronson, former mayor of Anchorage (2021–2024)
Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, former state representative from the 35th district (2013–2023)
Bernadette Wilson, waste management company founder and conservative activist
After initially finishing second in the primary, Begich withdrew and endorsed Kreiss-Tomkins, allowing fifth-place finisher Taylor to advance to the general election.
The Cook Political Report Tossup September 17, 2026 Decision Desk HQ Tossup September 23, 2026
|Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D) $2,170,998 $1,861,062 $309,935
co/efficient (R) September 14–17, 2026 799 (LV) ± 3.5% 20% |43% 17% 6% 14%
On September 4, Dahlstrom reversed her decision and announced that Taylor would be certified
Taylor and Bronson called upon Republican voters to rank all three Republicans in the race, while Wilson urged her supporters not to rank other candidates
most of his funding came from outside the state, including employees of Anthropic and others connected to the artificial intelligence industry
Mary Peltola, former U.S. Representative from Alaska's at-large congressional district (2022–2025) (running for U.S. Senate)
Not in the source: facts.forecast is empty: no model nowcast or election-day row for this race.; facts.candidates lists Dan Sullivan (R, incumbent) and Mary Peltola (D), which contradicts the text (Dunleavy is the term-limited incumbent; Peltola declined and is running for Senate); the candidate list appears to be mis-joined, possibly with AK-SEN.; The text has no general-election results yet and no post-primary endorsement list (the section is empty).; Republican fundraising figures are only as of February 1, 2026; no later reports for Wilson, Bronson or Taylor.; Rater labels 'R' (Inside Elections) and 'Flip' (RealClearPolitics, Silver Bulletin) are given without lean/likely detail or direction beyond the label.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as dfc5e78c5906; written by claude-opus-5-5 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+16.9 | R+10.6 | R+19.7 |
A shift of 2.8 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.
The state in numbers
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 31.2% | 34.0% | -2.8 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 58.3% | 66.3% | -7.9 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 3.0% | 10.1% | -7.1 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 7.1% | 12.9% | -5.7 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 6.3% | 4.4% | +2.0 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 7.8% | 9.6% | -1.8 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 35.6 | 39.1 | -3.48 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $89,336 | $77,633 | $+11,703 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $333,300 | $314,132 | $+19,168 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 66.6% | 67.4% | -0.8 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 5.8% | 4.8% | +1.0 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 6.5% | 3.0% | +3.5 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 8.8% | 12.3% | -3.5 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 10.2% | 11.1% | -0.9 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 25.2% | 32.1% | -6.9 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 6.1% | 2.6% | +3.5 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 4.1% | 2.9% | +1.2 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.43 | 0.47 | -0.03 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 3.7% | 4.0% | -0.3 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | -0.4 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.3 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | -0.5 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.4 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $76,234 | $70,662 | $+5,572 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 26.0% | 32.4% | -6.4 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 19.5% | 19.4% | +0.1 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 4.0% | 6.1% | -2.1 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 2.8% | 4.4% | -1.6 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 4.9% | 3.8% | +1.1 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.7% | 0.6% | +0.1 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.2% | 0.3% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.5% | 0.9% | +0.6 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 3.3% | 1.5% | +1.8 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 6.0% | 1.2% | +4.9 pts |
ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.
Who is ahead, and by how much?
Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.
How likely is each to win?
Monte Carlo error is ±0.2 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.
How wide is the range?
Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -7.9 and +22.5 points. Election day: -15.5 to +17.8. The election-day interval is 2.9 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.
What is the uncertainty made of?
Total sd 10.35 points, made of latent opinion 56%, race-specific polling error 23%, drift to election day 15%, correlated polling error 6%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.
What evidence is this built on?
9 polls, most recent 2026-09-17. 20% verified against a primary source.
What changed since the last run?
This is the earliest stored run for this race; there is nothing to compare.
How has this model done before?
Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.
Where did every number come from?
Nowcast run 6d58a561-03a0-44ad-b74b-19ebd16d982e and election-day run 5bf1f86c-4282-4f9a-b499-b9c9f2b06ccf, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.