Mary Peltola inches further ahead of Sen. Sullivan in Alaska's tight Senate race

Alex DeMarban, Anchorage Daily News on Nov 9, 2026

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Democrat Mary Peltola inched further ahead of Republican U.S. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan in the Senate race on Monday after another small batch of preliminary election results was released by the Alaska Division of Elections.

Tens of thousands of early and absentee ballots still have yet to be counted following the Nov. 3 election, and a winner may not be known until Nov. 18, with the election results expected to be certified on Nov. 25.

The new tally on Monday brings the total ballot count to more than 220,000, about 5,000 more than the previous update Nov. 4.

A larger batch of results is set to be released Tuesday.

With the new numbers, Peltola, a former U.S. representative, has grown her lead over Sullivan, a two-term Republican incumbent, to 2,517 first-choice votes, reflecting about 1.1% of the vote. Peltola previously held a lead of just 637 votes, or 0.3%.

In Monday’s updated count, she received 106,321 first-choice votes, or 48.6% of the vote.

Sullivan received 103,804 votes, or 47.5% of the vote.

The Alaska contest may be one of the last congressional races decided in the U.S., following a GOP implosion in the Nov. 3 elections nationally that allowed Democrats to regain control of both the U.S. House and Senate by large margins amid voter anger over the policies of Republican President Donald Trump, including the costly Iran war.

Both the Peltola campaign and Sullivan campaign have released statements describing what they say is their path to victory, based on cast vote record data released by the Alaska Division of Elections reflecting ballot information available so far. The two sides may also be facing off in Anchorage Superior Court after the Peltola campaign filed suit against the state late last week seeking data about rejected absentee ballots.

In Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, Gerald Heikes, a Republican perennial candidate from Palmer, is running in third with 4,865 first-choice votes, or 2.2% of the vote.

The namesake challenger to the senator, Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg, is running in fourth with 3,651 votes, or 1.7%.

Despite the small numbers for the Petersburg Sullivan and Heikes, ballots from their supporters could help decide the winner of the race under Alaska’s ranked choice voting system, assuming neither Peltola or Sullivan has more than 50% of the vote by Nov. 18, when the last ballots are scheduled to be counted.

In that case, the namesake challenger and Heikes could both be eliminated and the ballots favoring them would be redistributed to their supporters’ next-ranked candidates, helping decide Peltola or the incumbent Sullivan as the winner.

Under ranked choice tabulation in races with more than two candidates, if no candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes, then the candidate who received the fewest votes is eliminated. Their supporters’ votes are then redistributed to those voters’ second choices. The process continues until one of the candidates has received more than 50% of the vote.

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