Mary Peltola greets supporters at her election night watch party at the Sheraton Anchorage hotel on Nov. 3, 2026. (Marc Lester/ADN) Democrat Mary Peltola moved slightly ahead of Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan in the Senate race on Monday after the Alaska Division of Elections released another small batch of preliminary election results. Tens of thousands of early and absentee votes have yet to be counted after the Nov. 3 election, and a winner may not be known until Nov. 18, with election results expected to be certified on Nov. 25. Monday’s new count brings the total vote count to more than 220,000, about 5,000 more than the previous update on Nov. 4. A larger batch of results will be released on Tuesday. With the new numbers, Peltola, a former U.S. representative, has increased his lead over Sullivan, a two-term Republican incumbent, to 2,517 first-choice votes, reflecting about 1.1% of the vote. Peltola previously had a lead of just 637 votes, or 0.3%. In Monday’s updated count, he received 106,321 first-choice votes, or 48.6% of the votes. Sullivan received 103,804 votes, or 47.5% of the vote. Sen. Dan Sullivan delivers remarks at the Captain Cook Hotel on Tuesday night, Nov. 3, 2026. (DNA photo by Anne Raup) The Alaska race may be one of the last congressional elections decided in the U.S., following a GOP implosion in the Nov. 3 national election that allowed Democrats to regain control of the U.S. House and Senate by wide margins amid voter anger over the party’s policies. Republican President Donald Trump, including the costly Iran war. Both Peltola and Sullivan’s campaigns have released statements outlining what they say is their path to victory, based on vote-record data released by the Alaska Division of Elections that reflects ballot information available so far. The two sides may also face off in Anchorage Superior Court after Peltola’s campaign filed a lawsuit against the state late last week seeking data on rejected absentee ballots. On Monday night, Peltola campaign manager Cheryl Bruce issued a statement celebrating the results, saying they show voters are “fed up with high costs and corruption” and point to an eventual Democratic victory. About 68% of the votes counted Monday went to Peltola, “reflecting strong support in key areas of Anchorage and Chevak,” Bruce wrote. “This overwhelming margin further strengthens Mary’s path to victory, and Mary looks forward to continuing her relentless fight to reduce costs and put Alaska first in the United States Senate after all the votes are counted.”[Like in past elections, Alaska is still counting ballots. When will we know who won?]In Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, Gerald Heikes, a perennial Republican candidate from Palmer, is in third place with 4,865 first-choice votes, or 2.2% of the vote. The senator’s eponymous challenger, Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg, is in fourth place with 3,651 votes, or 1.7%. Despite the small numbers of the Sullivans and the Petersburg Heikes, their supporters’ ballots could help decide the winner of the race under Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, assuming neither Peltola nor Sullivan has more than 50% of the vote before Nov. 18, when the last ballots are scheduled to be counted. In that case, the eponymous challenger and Heikes could be eliminated and ballots favoring them redistributed among their supporters’ next ranked candidates, helping to decide Peltola or incumbent Sullivan as the winner. With more than two candidates, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, the candidate who received the fewest votes is eliminated. Their supporters’ votes are then redistributed among those voters’ second choices. The process continues until one of the candidates has obtained more than 50% of the votes.
