Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola extended her lead over incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan in an updated vote total published Monday by the Alaska Division of Elections.
While Peltola has held more first-choice votes since Election Day, preliminary calculations by the Alaska Beacon previously showed Sullivan leading once the state’s ranked choice runoff results were factored into the count. On Monday, however, Peltola gained enough first-choice votes to outweigh Sullivan’s runoff advantage.
As of 4 p.m. Monday, she led Sullivan by 2,517 votes out of 219,342 total ballots cast. Republican candidate Gerald Heikes and independent Dan J. Sullivan trailed far behind in third and fourth place, respectively.
Under Alaska’s election system, a candidate who secures more than 50% of first-choice votes wins outright. If no candidate reaches that threshold, a ranked-choice runoff decides the winner through an iterative elimination of the lowest-performing candidates until two remain.
Preliminary calculations from Election Day indicated Sen. Sullivan would comfortably clear that redistribution hurdle. Monday’s update alters that math, giving Peltola a broad enough first-choice advantage to absorb or bypass the runoff redistribution entirely.
Standing at 48.5% of the first-choice vote share, Peltola inches closer to the absolute majority required to win the seat without entering the ranked-choice tabulation. That dynamic could shift again when fresh numbers drop.
The Alaska Division of Elections added 4,947 counted ballots to the statewide tally on Monday. Tens of thousands of additional ballots are scheduled for processing on Tuesday, incorporating absentee and early votes collected immediately before Election Day.
Election officials temporarily withheld those ballots to cross-reference poll registers and prevent double voting. Tuesday’s scheduled update carries immense weight for contests across the state beyond the high-profile U.S. Senate race.
In the concurrent gubernatorial contest, Democratic candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins held 49.4% of first-choice votes on Monday. Republican gubernatorial candidate Dave Bronson, currently running in third place, stated last week that Kreiss-Tomkins’ victory appears inevitable.
Republican candidate Bernadette Wilson remains in second place with 28.8% of first-choice votes and has not yet conceded the race.
Ballot Measure 2, which aims to repeal Alaska’s open-primary and ranked-choice voting framework, continues to lag behind. A full 52.3% of participating voters have cast ballots opposing the repeal.
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