At 06:44 CET, Mary Peltola led Dan S. Sullivan in the Alaska Senate race by 7,384 votes, 54.1 to 42.8 percent with 21.6 percent of the expected vote counted, according to NBC News, based on A
At 06:44 CET, Mary Peltola led Dan S. Sullivan in the Alaska Senate race by 7,384 votes, 54.1 to 42.8 percent with 21.6 percent of the expected vote counted, according to NBC News, based on AP data. No winner has been called. A Democrat has not won an Alaska Senate race since 2008. Almost all of Alaska's polls were set to close at 8 p.m. Alaska time on 3 November, which is 06:00 CET on 4 November, and ranked-choice rules apply: a candidate with more than 50 percent of first-choice votes wins outright, otherwise a ranked-choice tabulation follows on 18 November. Mary Peltola, a Democrat who represented Alaska in the US House from 2022 to 2025, challenges Senator Dan Sullivan, who is running for a third term.
Alaska Senate race: the key facts
NBC News reports the Alaska count for the state's 40 House districts plus overseas absentee ballots. We estimate about 270,000 votes are still out, most of them in District 6, District 9, District 3. Under ranked-choice rules the early count is not the final word: absentee ballots mailed within the US can still arrive until 13 November and ballots mailed from abroad until 18 November, results until then show first-choice votes only, and the ranked-choice tabulation on 18 November applies if nobody passes 50 percent.
Source: AP via NBC News, own estimate
District 4 (Greater Juneau) stood at D+37.4 in 2024 and had reported few or no votes at this count. District 17 (Downtown Anchorage) stood at D+33.5 in 2024 and had reported few or no votes at this count. District 27 (Wasilla area) stood at R+56.2 in 2024 and had reported few or no votes at this count. District 31 (Downtown Fairbanks) stood at R+3.4 in 2024 and had reported few or no votes at this count. The 2024 numbers are NBC's presidential results for the same 40 districts, matched by district number. These figures compare a partial Senate count with a full presidential count, so the final swing can still change in either direction.
District Trump vs Harris 2024 Sullivan vs Peltola 2026 Counted District 6 (South Kenai Peninsula) R+16.1 no votes yet 0 % District 9 (Far South Anchorage Borough) D+2.3 no votes yet 0 % District 3 (Northeast Panhandle) D+14.7 no votes yet 0 % District 8 (North/East Kenai Peninsula) R+49.7 no votes yet 0 % District 23 (North Anchorage Borough) R+18.6 no votes yet 0 % District 29 (Mat-Su Valley East) R+44.9 no votes yet 0 % District 25 (Mat-Su, Palmer Area) R+35.6 no votes yet 0 % District 30 (Mat-Su, Parks Highway) R+44.7 no votes yet 0 %
Source: AP via NBC News, 2024 results via NBC News
Peltola is a former US representative who held Alaska's at-large House seat from 2022 to 2025. In the August primary she finished first with 49.5 percent, ahead of Sullivan with 41.4 percent, according to Wikipedia's race summary. Sullivan, a Republican, was first elected in 2014 and last re-elected in 2020. Two more candidates are on the general election ballot: Gerald Heikes, a Republican, and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher from Petersburg who is listed without a party and is not related to the senator. NBC News lists the senator as Dan S. Sullivan and the other candidate as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.
Voters rank the candidates in order of preference. Alaska Public Media reports that a candidate with more than 50 percent of first-choice votes wins outright. If nobody gets there, the tabulation on 18 November eliminates candidates from the bottom and moves their ballots to each voter's next choice until one candidate leads with a majority. The same ballot carries Measure 2, which would repeal the 2020 measure that introduced ranked-choice voting and open primaries in Alaska state elections.
Alaska also elects a governor because Mike Dunleavy is term-limited. Four candidates are on the ballot: Republicans Dave Bronson, a former mayor of Anchorage, Treg Taylor, a former state attorney general, and Bernadette Wilson, plus Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a former state representative. The governor's race uses ranked-choice voting as well.
The money in this race came as direct contributions. Tech Influence Watch, the tracker formerly known as Follow the Crypto, lists $391,600 for Sullivan from Palantir, Jeff Yass, Andreessen Horowitz and nine other companies or their executives, against $28,676 for Peltola from Google, Coinbase, Galaxy Digital and one other company. The tracker lists no crypto or AI committee spending in the Senate race. Its only Alaska entry for committee money is the House: Defend American Jobs, the crypto committee in the Fairshake network, spent $508,142 in the primary for Representative Nick Begich.
The advocacy group Stand With Crypto scores Sullivan 100 and Peltola 98, a gap of two points, so by that measure the two are almost level. The next attempt at a market structure law makes the seat count anyway. The Senate did not take up the CLARITY Act on 15 September: the vote to begin debate failed 49 to 50, with no Democrat voting yes, and it needed 60 votes. Whoever holds the Alaska seat in January votes on the next attempt. Where the bill stands is in our CLARITY Act explainer.
Republicans went into the night with 53 seats, so Democrats needed a net gain of four for the majority. NBC News projects Democrats to control the Senate, with 52 seats for Democrats and 41 for Republicans at 06:44 CET. With the majority decided, the races still open decide the size of the margin, not who controls the chamber. All calls and the full Senate table are in our midterm results live ticker. More from the states: Nebraska and the $13.5 million against Dan Osborn, the Iowa Senate race and the biggest changes since 2024.
Traders put Peltola at 93.0 percent and Sullivan at 6.0 percent at 06:44 CET, on a market with $3.5 million in volume. That shows what the market expects. Prediction markets can move quickly on early counts. If you hold coins through a week like this, compare regulated crypto exchanges and crypto brokers first. This article is not investment advice.
