Peltola adds lead over Sullivan after large number of ballots fall, but Alaska Senate race still close

Democrat Mary Peltola continued to increase her lead over Republican U.S. Sen. Dan S. Sullivan in the Alaska Senate race Tuesday evening after the state Division of Elections released its latest set of preliminary election results.

Tens of thousands of advance and mail-in ballots have yet to be counted after the Nov. 3 election, and the winner may not be known until Nov. 18. The election results are expected to be certified on November 25.

Tuesday’s new tally is the biggest update to the race in several days, but the competition remains close.

The total ballot count now exceeds 245,000, about 25,000 more than the previous update on Monday.

With the new numbers, Peltola, a former U.S. representative, leads Sullivan, a two-term Republican incumbent, by 4,250 first-choice votes, an increase of 1,700 votes from Monday’s gap.

Peltola received 118,926 first-choice votes, or 49% of the vote, according to the latest results.

Sullivan received 114,676 votes, or 47.2% of the vote.

The Alaska race could be one of the last congressional elections decided in the United States, after the Republican Party’s implosion in the Nov. 3 national election saw Democrats regain control of the House and Senate by wide margins, amid voter anger over Republican President Donald Trump’s policies, including the costly war in Iran.

Both the Peltola and Sullivan campaigns have released statements outlining what they say is their path to victory, based on votes cast data released by the Alaska Division of Elections reflecting ballot information available in last week’s counts.

Peltola also increased his lead after releasing a small batch of results on Monday.

(As in previous elections, Alaska continues to count ballots. When will we know who won?)

The remaining candidates on the ballot are Gerald Heikes, a perennial Republican candidate from Palmer, who comes in third with 5,318 first-choice votes, or 2.2 percent of the vote.

The senator’s namesake challenger, Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from St. Petersburg, came in fourth with 4,027 votes, or 1.7 percent.

Despite St. Petersburg’s Sullivan and Heikes’ low numbers, their supporters’ ballots could help decide the winner of the race under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, assuming neither Peltola nor Sullivan will have more than 50 percent of the vote by Nov. 18, when the final ballots are scheduled to be counted.

In this case, both the namesake challenger and Heikes could be eliminated and the ballots in their favor would be redistributed to their supporters’ next candidates, helping to establish Peltola or the incumbent Sullivan as the winner.

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