Peltola Leads Sullivan by 637 Votes in Alaska With a Quarter of Ballots Uncounted as Trump Courts Minor-Party Voters

Alaska is still counting, and it will be for another twelve days. Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by 637 first-choice votes, 102,962 to 102,325, or 48 percent to 47.7 percent, with tens of thousands of early, absentee and rural ballots still to be counted, the Anchorage Daily News reported on Thursday. The New York Times estimated that about a quarter of the ballots were outstanding.

That makes Alaska the loudest of the undecided midterm races, a contest the Justice Department has already tried to disrupt with a lawsuit over certification. NBC News's results page, last updated at 10.15pm Eastern on Thursday, listed the contest as too early to call with 74.1 percent of the expected vote counted and roughly 75,000 votes outstanding. NBC's live coverage said late mail ballots and the ranked-choice count could delay the result by days or weeks. Our earlier report noted the seat among those still uncalled in the Senate leadership arithmetic.

When will the Alaska Senate race be decided?

Not before mid-November. Alaska accepts mail ballots for 15 days after Election Day, so the last are expected to be counted on 18 November, followed by the ranked-choice tabulation if no candidate passes 50 percent, the Daily News reported. Certification is scheduled for 25 November, and the new senators are sworn in on 3 January. Fox gave the same 18 November target and the same warning that final results could take weeks.

Who could decide the ranked-choice count?

The two candidates in third and fourth place. Dan J. Sullivan, a challenger who shares the senator's name, has 3,600 votes, or 1.7 percent, and Gerald Heikes has 4,846, or 2.3 percent. Their voters' second choices could decide the race. President Trump posted on Truth Social that votes for both should go to the incumbent and that the election was over, a post the Daily News described as bypassing the state's count. Heikes called the remarks foolish and said he was irritated at being called a slug.

What are the campaigns saying?

Peltola's campaign says that when every vote is counted she will win, and that the outstanding early and absentee ballots will extend her lead. Sullivan's campaign says its own analysis shows he would have won by 328 votes if ranked-choice tabulation had been run on election night, though that analysis excluded 10,805 rural votes that favour Peltola. The campaign has also alleged election fraud, which the Daily News reported without confirming.

The legal fight runs alongside the count. A federal judge dismissed a Trump-ordered lawsuit seeking to block certification, and the Justice Department has appealed to the Ninth Circuit, whose schedule puts its opening argument on 14 December, after certification. Until the ballots are counted the race has a lead, not a winner, and the lead is 637 votes.