Alaska Senate race remains close as 100,000 uncounted ballots await review

The race for Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat remains undecided as of Wednesday morning, with Democrat Mary Peltola leading incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan by approximately 600 votes. The margin, equivalent to 48% for Peltola versus 47.7% for Sullivan, reflects a count that excludes a substantial number of outstanding ballots.

Elections officials anticipate counting more than 100,000 ballots over the following two weeks. The final tally is expected to be determined after the last substantial count of absentee and early votes, which typically occurs ten days after the election. Absentee ballots may arrive up to 15 days after polls close, provided they were postmarked by Election Day.

Historical voting patterns in Alaska indicate that final results often differ from initial tallies. In 2024, the campaign to defend the state’s nonpartisan primary system and ranked choice voting initially trailed in the early count. That measure finished with 160,861 votes, or 50.1%, defeating the repeal campaign, which received 160,124 votes, or 49.9%. A similar measure on this year’s ballot currently shows the defense campaign ahead 51.85% to 48.15%.

Political consultants note that shifts in results frequently favor progressive and Democratic candidates by three to four percentage points. Data from the open primaries defense campaign indicates that Democrats make up 11.6% of registered voters but account for 18.8% of those who cast absentee and early votes through Nov. 2. Absentee ballots from rural, Native, and coastal communities also tend to arrive later in the counting process.

John-Henry Heckendorn of Ship Creek Group, which consults for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and independent House candidate Bill Hill, explained that votes arrive at different rates from different parts of the state. He stated that these compounding factors drive the expected shift in the totals.

The 2024 presidential race demonstrated a similar trend, as Democrat Kamala Harris’s share of the vote increased from 40.4% on Election Night to 41.4% in the final results. In the 2022 gubernatorial race, Republican Mike Dunleavy’s share dropped from 52.1% to 50.3% as all ballots were counted.

State officials informed campaigns that the Election Night count includes early votes cast only through Oct. 29. Mike Dubke, a consultant to Sullivan, noted that this timing is a variable because many subsequent votes were cast after the New York Times published a report on a second Dan Sullivan candidacy. Bethany Marcum of the repeal campaign said the 2020 citizens initiative distorted the system but did not directly address how results might shift.

The state’s long vote-tallying process means that the final outcomes for the Senate race and other close contests will not be known until the last of the outstanding absentee and early ballots are processed and certified.