Former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola holds a commanding lead in the 2026 election for governor of Alaska if she chooses to jump into the race, a new survey from progressive pollster Data for Progress (DFP) shows. 

Peltola, who was elected to Alaska’s at-large U.S. House seat in a 2022 special election and then to a full term in the House before losing her seat in 2024, is widely viewed as the most formidable potential Democratic candidate for either governor or U.S. Senate in 2026. She was the first woman to represent Alaska in the U.S. House, the first Alaska Native person elected to Congress and could be the state’s first Alaska Native governor. 

“I think that’s a huge thing, not just for representation, but for policy and people’s lives,” said Jason Katz-Brown, an Alaska-based senior adviser at DFP.

Peltola had the highest favorability ratings of major Alaska politicians in the survey, which was shared first with The 19th. She holds a net positive favorability of 9 points, and leads a crowded field of lesser-known and less popular Republican gubernatorial opponents by double-digit margins. 

Katz-Brown said Peltola’s focus on issues like fisheries management and opposing the proposed merger of grocery chains Kroger and Albertsons has made her especially well-regarded among voters. 

“She’s done a lot to deserve being so popular and being in such a strong position,” he said. 

DFP conducts regular surveys of Alaska. In 2024, the organization’s polling accurately captured the margin of President Donald Trump’s victory in the state and the tight race for U.S. House that Peltola went on to narrowly lose to GOP Rep. Nick Begich. The most recent poll surveyed 678 likely voters from July 21 to July 27 with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points. 

Alaska votes solidly Republican on the presidential level, but its politics have a unique independent streak: over half of registered voters aren’t affiliated with either major political party, and both chambers of the state legislature have a majority ruling coalition made up of both Democratic and Republican lawmakers. 

Incumbent Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy is term-limited, setting up an open governor’s race. And with Democrats out of power, all eyes are on Peltola, who joined the legal and public affairs firm Holland & Hart in March and has not yet publicly made moves toward entering either race. 

“The policies that she spent her whole last two years running on, especially on fisheries policy, are really, really popular things in Alaska, and the policies of the Republican governor are extremely unpopular,” Katz-Brown said. “All that’s combined, I think, really backs up the people in the state who really want to see a Peltola governorship.”

Several Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and conservative activist and businessperson Bernadette Wilson, have declared or taken steps to launch campaigns while the Democratic side of the field remains open. Elections in Alaska are conducted with top-four nonpartisan primaries and ranked-choice general elections.  

The survey included a ranked-choice general election simulation of Peltola and several other declared and potential candidates, and in every round, Peltola came out far ahead of the competition. 

In the first round, 40 percent of voters said they would rank Peltola first, 11 percent said they would rank Wilson, and 10 percent said they would rank Dahlstrom with other candidates in the single digits. When all other candidates were eliminated and their votes reallocated, Peltola would beat Dahlstrom by 30 points, 65 percent to 35 percent, in a head-to-head competition. 

“This poll makes clear she’s in an extremely strong position to run for governor,” Katz-Brown said. Even “in the most pessimistic of scenarios,” where “not sure” votes are allocated to Dahlstrom or Republican voters rank four Republican candidates and their votes aren’t exhausted, Peltola comes out on top, he said. 

Peltola would benefit from Dahlstrom being largely unknown and unpopular in the survey, and a fractured Republican field, Katz-Brown said. 

“I think it reflects that the Republican Party is literally years away from unifying around one candidate, and has a ton of work to do,” he added. 

In the 2026 Senate race, 46 percent of voters said they would rank GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan first, and 45 percent said they would rank Peltola first. But Katz-Brown said defeating Sullivan, a second-term incumbent who won reelection by 13 points in 2020, would be a much tougher lift for Peltola than an open governor’s race. 

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski didn’t entirely rule out making a run for governor herself in recent comments to local media. But that potential bid could be threatened by her cratering favorability ratings. 

The DFP survey found Murkowski’s net favorability has plummeted by over 20 points since the organization’s last poll conducted in the spring, following her controversial vote for Republicans’ massive party-line tax cut and spending legislation, which Trump dubbed his “One Big Beautiful Bill.” 

In DFP’s last Alaska survey released in March, Murkowski had a slim net positive approval rating, with 49 percent of respondents holding a favorable view of her and 48 percent holding an unfavorable view. In the July survey, 37 percent of respondents held a favorable view of Murkowski, while 60 percent held an unfavorable view, putting her favorability rating at net negative 23 points. 

Murkowski cast a critical vote for the megabill, which passed 51-50 with Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie, following the addition of several provisions and carveouts beneficial to Alaska. After voting for the legislation, Murkowski stated that she hoped the House would make changes to the bill, calling it “not good enough for the rest of our nation” and “not ready for the President’s desk.” 

But House Republicans made no such changes to the Senate-passed bill, sending the legislation to Trump’s desk by the July 4 deadline he set for lawmakers. Murkowski later told the Anchorage Daily News that she felt “cheated” by Trump signing executive orders that undercut one of the concessions in the bill that she negotiated, a 12-month window preserving tax credits for wind and solar energy projects. 

Murkowski, who has served in the Senate since 2002, has historically drawn much of her support from Democratic and independent voters. She’s frequently broken with Trump and in 2022, she defeated a Trump-backed Republican challenger to win another six-year term. While her net negative favorability ratings among Republicans stayed consistent between the two most recent DFP surveys, her net favorability among Democrats fell by nearly 40 percentage points from 63 percent in the spring to 26 percent in July. Among independent and third-party voters, her net favorability fell from 12 points to 21 points underwater. 

“I think her run for governor could also be imperiled by having really no base of support anymore,” Katz-Brown said. 

Peltola has ample time to make a decision about her political future before the June 2026 filing deadline for governor. On July 1, the day the Senate passed the megabill, Peltola spoke out against the legislation. 

“We can not [sic] secure Alaska’s future by increasing healthcare and energy costs for regular Alaskans, so millionaires, like many of my former colleagues in Congress, and their billionaire donors can get even richer,” she wrote on social media. “Yes, let’s develop Alaska’s resources, but for the benefit of all Alaskans, not just a few.”