Alaska Senate Race 2026: Mary Peltola Leads Dan Sullivan by 4,250 Votes, and the Race Stays Uncalled

Eight days after Election Day, the United States Senate still has an open seat. Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by 4,250 votes in Alaska's Senate race — 118,926 votes (48.79%) to 114,676 (47.05%) in the Alaska Division of Elections' unofficial summary, with all 401 precincts reporting and about 84% of the expected vote counted, the Associated Press reported. Neither the AP nor other major news organizations have called the race.

The complication is Alaska's ranked-choice system. Because no candidate has cleared 50% of first-choice votes — Republican Gerald Heikes holds 5,318 votes and an independent namesake, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., holds 4,027 — the state will tabulate voters' rankings on Nov. 18 if the leader still sits below half. FairVote's preliminary analysis of the cast-vote record warns that the tabulation is not a formality: in the ballots examined so far, transferred votes move the margin about four-tenths of a point toward Sullivan, enough to put him ahead 50.1% to 49.9% in that preliminary tally, though late-arriving ballots are expected to favor Peltola.

More numbers are coming before then. The Division of Elections is scheduled to release another results update on Friday, and Alaska accepts overseas ballots through Nov. 18, the same day the ranked-choice tabulation is targeted. A state judge also heard a records lawsuit from Peltola's campaign this week, the AP reported — a dispute about records, not about the tally itself.

For Austin readers, the stakes are national: this seat helps decide how much room the new Congress has to move in January, and it is the clearest demonstration left in the country of how ranked-choice counting can hold a result open for two weeks. Until the tabulation lands, the honest headline is the one the numbers support — Peltola ahead, race uncalled.