Democrat Mary Peltola has widened her lead over Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska’s high-stakes Senate race. Nearly a week after Election Day, the race is still too close to call.
The Alaska Division of Elections added 4,947 ballots to the count on Monday. Peltola’s lead in first-choice votes grew to 2,517, up from 637 last week. She now has 106,321 votes, or about 48.6%, to Sullivan’s 103,804, or about 47.5%. More than 219,000 ballots have been counted so far.
Republican Gerald Heikes and independent Dan J. Sullivan Jr. trail far behind in third and fourth.
Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, so a candidate needs a majority to win outright. Earlier calculations showed Sullivan overtaking Peltola once lower-ranked candidates’ votes were redistributed. Her new margin is now big enough to keep her ahead even if a runoff tabulation is triggered.
That could change quickly. Tens of thousands of absentee and early ballots, cast in the days just before the election, were expected to be added Tuesday. Officials held those ballots back while they cross-checked Election Day poll books to make sure no one voted twice. Counting is expected to last several more days as ballots arrive from the state’s remote areas.
The Peltola campaign is already sounding confident.
“Alaskans are fed up with high costs and corruption stemming from DC, and they have made their voices heard,” campaign manager Cheryl Bruce said. She added that it is “clear” Peltola will win once every vote is counted.
The race has been dogged by controversy over Sullivan Jr., a retired Petersburg teacher who shares the senator’s name. He was running fourth with 3,651 votes, about 1.7%. A New York Times report alleged that Peltola and national Democrats were involved in recruiting him. Peltola’s campaign, the Alaska Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee all denied it.
President Trump slammed the candidacy, and the Justice Department sued to block certification of the results if the senator lost. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit.
The legal fight isn’t over. Peltola’s campaign has gone to court seeking records on absentee ballots the state rejected, and the Sullivan campaign has moved to intervene. The Republican National Committee has also sent attorneys and election observers across Alaska.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer personally courted Peltola to run. She narrowly lost her House seat in 2024. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, endorsed Sullivan the day Peltola entered the race, even though she had backed Peltola in the past. Peltola finished first in the August primary with 49.5% to Sullivan’s 41.4%.
Sullivan, a two-term incumbent, has held the seat since 2015. If Peltola wins, she would become the first Alaska Native to serve in the U.S. Senate and the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Alaska since Mark Begich in 2008.
Elsewhere on the ballot, Ballot Measure 2, which would repeal Alaska’s open primaries and ranked-choice voting, was trailing, with 52.3% of voters opposed.
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