The lead in Alaska's Senate race has changed hands. Democrat Mary Peltola now leads Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by 626 votes — 102,701 votes, 48.02 percent, to Sullivan's 102,075, 47.73 percent — with 394 of 401 precincts reporting, as the updated count moved the former congresswoman in front of the sitting senator in a race that is still too early to call.
The flip reverses the picture from election night, when Sullivan led the first-choice count. Two other names are drawing votes in the race: a second candidate named Dan J. Sullivan — a namesake Alaskans call “Decoy Dan” — has 3,583 votes, and Gerald Heikes has 4,821.
Alaska votes by ranked choice, and neither leader is anywhere near the majority that ends the race on first choices alone. With no candidate above 50 percent, the state will run its ranked-choice tabulation, and ballots postmarked by Election Day are still being accepted until November 18 — so the outcome, as The Alaska Story notes, will not be known for many days.
Peltola, who held Alaska's U.S. House seat before this run at the Senate, addressed supporters as the count turned: “We are standing up and taking our state back.”
For voters, the stakes of the wait are direct: Alaska's Senate seat decides who speaks for the state on the energy, lands and fishing questions that run its economy, and — after a night that already gave Democrats the Senate majority — whether that majority grows by one more seat or holds where it stands.
📰 ProfiloPolitics Member News — choose your news, share it, earn credit:
https://white-curlew-963569.hostingersite.com
Never miss a story — Join our Telegram channel
Breaking U.S. political news, live as it happens — plus the stories the big outlets sit on.
Join ProfiloPolitics on Telegram