Alaska Senate Race Too Close to Call as Peltola Holds Narrow Lead Over Sullivan

Alaska Senate Race Too Close to Call as Peltola Holds Narrow Lead Over Sullivan

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Senator Sullivan’s campaign said he was in that position despite an election cheating scandal. “He is also in the position despite a bloodbath for Republicans in the Lower 48,” Sullivan’s campaign wrote in a statement Wednesday morning, KTUU reported. By Wednesday afternoon, former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola had seized a narrow lead in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, holding 48% of the vote to incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan’s 47.7% with more than 215,906 ballots counted out of about 605,000 registered voters, according to preliminary results from the Alaska Division of Elections reported by ADN.

The contest remains too close to call, and the stakes reach far beyond the Last Frontier. While Democrats captured control of both the Senate and the House in the Lower 48 on Tuesday night, Alaska’s outcome hangs in the balance, with the final result likely unknown until mid-November. Tens of thousands of early and absentee ballots remain uncounted, and if neither candidate secures more than 50% of first-choice votes, the race will proceed to a ranked-choice tabulation on November 18, meaning control of the U.S. Senate could rest on Alaska’s final tally.

Two Victory Speeches, One Undecided Race

On Election Night, both candidates addressed crowds convinced of their success. At the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage, Sullivan told supporters, “The contrast between our campaign and her campaign couldn’t be more clear. We know it, and the Alaska people know it, and that’s why we’re going to win this race,” before calling it a night as early returns showed him pulling ever so slightly ahead, KTUU reported.

Alaska Senate race: Mary Peltola, Dan Sullivan predict long wait for result in midterm elections

Across town at the Sheraton Anchorage Hotel, Peltola declared to more than 300 supporters, “This whole room, winners, winners we are winning our state back.” The first Alaska Native to serve in Congress led the crowd in a chant of “aarigaa,” an Iñupiaq word meaning “wonderful” or “good,” and told them, “The weather is changing. We have seen it in our lifetimes. And now we are having a political change,” before adding, “We can wrestle our country back… We can get our country back from corporate greed,” according to ADN. By Wednesday morning, however, the momentum had shifted. Peltola held 102,962 votes to Sullivan’s 102,325, a margin of just 637 votes with 99.5% of precincts reporting.

Ranked Choice and the Road to November 18

The path to a final result runs through Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system. The ballots counted Tuesday night represented only those cast on Election Day and during early voting between October 19 and October 29. Alaska accepted absentee ballots up to 15 days after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked by November 3, meaning the remaining mail-in ballots were not fully counted until days later, KTUU reported. The ranked-choice tabulation occurred on November 18, and the results were certified on November 25.

If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated and those ballots redistributed to their supporters’ second-choice candidates on November 18. The process repeats until one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. The results are set to be certified on November 25. This is not Alaska’s first marathon count: in 2008, the Senate race took 15 days to call on November 19; in 2010, it took 13 days to call on November 17; and in 2014, it took until November 12 to call the Senate race and November 14 for Governor, according to the Ship Creek Group, a progressive consulting firm that also worked on the No on 2 campaign, as cited by KTUU.

Amid National Losses, Alaska Holds the Line

The Alaska election results differ sharply from the rest of the country’s voting trends. While Republicans suffered what Sullivan’s campaign called a “bloodbath” across the country, with Democrats retaking both chambers of Congress in the Lower 48, the contest here has drawn record spending and unprecedented fundraising by Peltola, campaign finance records at the Federal Election Commission show. Republican President Donald Trump and his vice president held rallies in Alaska to boost Sullivan, ADN reported.

Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola. (Marc Lester / ADN)
Photo: adn.com

Complicating the ballot is Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg and the senator’s namesake, who received 3,600 votes, or 1.7%, running without party affiliation after the state Division of Elections listed him on the ballot without a party affiliation to distinguish him from the senator. His candidacy has sparked a so-far-unsuccessful lawsuit from the Trump administration alleging he is part of a plot by Democrats and the Peltola campaign to mislead voters, along with ongoing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and Alaska Department of Public Safety. Gerald Heikes, a Republican perennial candidate from Palmer, took third place with 4,846 votes, or 2.3%, according to ADN.

Both campaigns declined interview requests Wednesday morning, with emails to both campaigns requesting comment not returned. But with ranked-choice tabulation scheduled for November 18 and certification on November 25, Alaskans face at least two more weeks of uncertainty in a race that could determine control of the U.S. Senate.

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