Democrat Mary Peltola’s lead in the race for Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat has shrunk in the latest update from the Alaska Division of Elections.
Peltola now has 121,487 first-place votes, or 48.9 percent, in the Nov. 11 update.
Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-Alaska) has 117,512 first-place votes, or 47.3 percent. Peltola had been ahead by 4,250 votes and is now 3,975 votes ahead.
The gap between the candidates—which had exceeded the number of votes for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., whom Republicans and others allege entered the race at Democrats’ behest to draw votes away from the sitting senator—is now smaller than Dan J. Sullivan Jr.’s total.
Dan J. Sullivan Jr., in last place, has received 4,100 votes. Gerald Heikes, a Republican, is currently in third with 5,426 votes.
The Alaska Division of Elections and the campaigns for Peltola and Dan S. Sullivan did not return requests for comment. Peltola’s campaign has said it is confident she will ultimately prevail in the race.
The Associated Press estimates that with the new update, 86 percent of the votes cast have been counted.
Alaska is one of a handful of states that use ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank candidates by placing their preferred candidate as their first choice, their next preference as second choice, and so on.
If no candidate receives a majority of first-place votes, then all ballots listing the last-place candidate as the top choice will be checked to see whom voters placed second. That would add votes to the count for the other three candidates.
If a candidate still does not have a majority after that, another round will be completed for the third-place candidate.
A preliminary analysis by the organization FairVote of the ranked-choice voting record of some ballots released by the state on Nov. 11 shows Peltola with 50.15 percent of the vote, or 710 votes ahead of Dan S. Sullivan, after the final round of counting.
President Donald Trump has called for all votes cast for Dan J. Sullivan Jr. and Heikes to be awarded to Dan S. Sullivan, and the Department of Justice has asked a federal court to enjoin certification of the race until an investigation determines whether voters for Dan J. Sullivan Jr. meant to vote for the senator. The court dismissed the case, but an appeal is ongoing.
The race for the seat is the only uncalled Senate race in the country. Prosecutor Scott Colom, a Democrat, was declared the winner of a close race to represent Mississippi in the Senate on Nov. 11.
Democrats flipped control of the upper chamber in the midterms and will have 55 or 56 seats in the next Congress, depending on the outcome of the Alaska race.
Peltola, 53, represented Alaska’s at-large congressional district from 2022 to 2025. She lost in the 2024 election to Republican Nick Begich III.
Peltola said she ran for the Senate because she’s “seen firsthand how government is failing Alaskans.” Her platform included promises to make life more affordable for Alaska residents and fix what she described as a rigged system.
Dan S. Sullivan, 61, a Marine Corps veteran and former Alaska attorney general, was first elected to the Senate in 2014. He won reelection in 2020 with 53.9 percent of the vote.
Dan S. Sullivan’s campaign website says he has brought together a broad coalition of supporters. He’s sponsored legislation that has been signed into law, including bills that required studies on ocean-related pollution.
