Has the Alaska Senate Race Been Called?
No — the Alaska Senate race has not been called. President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social on Saturday, November 7, that Republican Senator Dan Sullivan had won the race, but no election authority and no news organisation has called it, and the Alaska Division of Elections has declared no winner. As of Saturday afternoon, Democrat Mary Peltola still led Sullivan by 637 votes, 48.17 percent to 47.88 percent, with roughly a quarter of the ballots still uncounted.
The plain reality is in the count itself. A race is called when the ballots counted make the outcome clear, and here the counted ballots put Peltola in front, with neither candidate holding the more than 50 percent needed to win outright under Alaska's ranked-choice system and tens of thousands of ballots still to be processed. A winner has been announced from the White House while the actual count says the opposite — and that gap between the declaration and the record is exactly why people are asking whether the race has really been called.
Trump says the race is settled once the votes cast for the other two names on the ballot are added to Sullivan's column. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., the second Dan Sullivan, took 3,600 votes, 1.68 percent, and Gerald Heikes took 4,846, 2.27 percent. Add those in, the president argues, and Sullivan is ahead by thousands — Heikes, he says, "was also fraudulently put into the Race," and the second Sullivan's votes were always meant for the senator.
"We are being patient waiting for more ballots to come in. In Alaska, it just takes a little bit longer as we wait for all of the ballots to come in." — Mary Peltola
But votes belong to the voters who cast them. A ballot marked for one candidate cannot be moved into another candidate's column by a social media post, whatever office the person posting holds. Under Alaska's ranked-choice law, the second Sullivan's 3,600 ballots and Heikes's 4,846 will move only where those voters themselves ranked a next choice when the tabulation runs — and the ballot data published by The New York Times this week shows that, of the second Sullivan's voters who did rank a next choice, about 30 percent ranked Peltola second and only about 16 percent ranked Senator Sullivan second. The arithmetic the declaration rests on is not the arithmetic the law uses.
When a winner is announced before a count is finished, the real result — whichever way it lands — arrives already doubted by half the country, and every official who certifies it is treated as overturning something rather than reporting it. If a race can be declared over while the declared winner is trailing and a quarter of the votes are still in envelopes, what is the count itself for?
The details that decide it are these. The Division of Elections is expected to release its next large batch of ballots on Tuesday, November 10. The state deadline for completing the count of absentee, mail and provisional ballots is November 18, the same day the ranked-choice tabulation is scheduled, and the Division is not expected to certify the final result before November 25 — the full timeline is in our earlier answer on when the Alaska Senate race will be called. The legal fight is running alongside the count: Peltola's campaign sued Alaska on Friday, November 6, for the records showing which absentee ballots have been rejected and why, arguing it "cannot ensure that its voters' lawful votes were properly counted without knowing whose absentee ballots were rejected or questioned, and why," while the state Department of Law says those records are preliminary and confidential — and a federal judge has already dismissed the Trump administration's attempt to block Alaska from certifying the result if Sullivan loses, a ruling the Justice Department is set to appeal.
So the race stands where the count left it: uncalled, with Peltola ahead and the decision still eleven days away. The only declaration of a winner so far is the president's, delivered on Saturday: "The Alaska Race is OVER. Dan Sullivan WON, BY A LOT!"