Democratic Party
US major political party; mounting 2026 midterm campaign on tariff economic message.
A retired teacher named Dan Sullivan filed as a Republican against the party's own incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan in Alaska, prompting officials to move on 12 June 2026 to strike him from the ballot as a decoy candidacy targeting the November race against Mary Peltola.
Last refreshed: 12 August 2026 · Appears in 2 active topics
How is the Democratic Party's 2026 strategy different from 2018 and 2022?
Timeline for Democratic Party
Mentioned in: Drones hit Kurdish camps in Iraq
Iran Conflict 2026Mentioned in: Nobody sued over the crossover ban
US Midterms 2026Mentioned in: Clacton's ballot paper splits the right four ways
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Court reinstates Walsh to primary ballot
US Midterms 2026Mentioned in: Cassidy out; Letlow meets Fleming on 27 June
US Midterms 2026Background
The Democratic Party is one of the two major US political parties, currently in opposition after losing the White House, Senate and House in 2024. Heading into the 2026 midterms it has closed a longstanding fundraising gap: by February the House campaign Arm, the DCCC, reported $57.4 million on hand against the Republican NRCC's $57.6 million, near parity for the first time this cycle.
The party also acts through state-level ballot machinery. In Massachusetts, a Democratic Party objection persuaded the state's Ballot Law Commission to strike Republican attorney-general candidate Michael Walsh from the primary ballot over signature fraud, only for an Essex County court to reverse that decision on 10 July, a result the state's top court declined to disturb.
The name is shared, confusingly, with the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, an entirely separate organisation whose members were the basis for armed-rebellion charges against two prisoners executed in Iran in May; it has no organisational connection to the US party.
A decoy candidate targets its Senate seat
Alaska's Division of Elections notified a retired teacher named Dan Sullivan on 12 June that he was ineligible for the Senate ballot, after he filed as a Republican, creating an identical name and party label to incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan. The incumbent faces the party's own candidate, Mary Peltola, in November.
Republican groups alleged the challenger had donated to Democrats, framing the filing as an attempt to confuse voters against their own incumbent. Election lawyer Scott Kendall called outright removal extreme and proposed a middle-initial ballot label instead, leaving the underlying contest between Sullivan and Peltola unaffected either way.
Its chairman accepts a one-way crossover ban
South Carolina barred anyone who voted in June's Democratic primary from taking part in the Republican special primary, a rule that fell on the party's own voters rather than Republicans'. No lawsuit followed, because state Democratic chairman Jay Parmley accepted the ruling alongside his Republican counterpart Drew McKissick.
The rule rests on no cited statute, only an election commission's discretion, and survives because it suited both parties this time rather than because either side tested it in court.