Alaska’s U.S. Senate race tightened slightly in the last batch of election results released Wednesday.
Democrat Mary Peltola now has 48.7% of the vote to Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan’s 47.1%. Her lead narrowed from 4,250 votes Tuesday to 3,975 on Wednesday. She also fell below an important threshold: Her lead is less than the 4,100 votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. of Petersburg.
That matters because the Trump administration in October sued to pre-emptively block “any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion.” It said that threshold would be met if Sen. Sullivan lost to Peltola by fewer votes than went to the other Sullivan. A District Court judge dismissed the case but the Trump administration is appealing.
The results Wednesday added 5,612 early absentee and questioned ballots to the total. The Associated Press estimates that 14% of votes remain to be counted. The next scheduled update is Friday, the deadline for most mailed ballots to arrive. Ballots sent from overseas have until Nov. 18, which is also the last day for counting and the day ranked choice tabulation takes place in races where no candidate got more than 50% of the vote.
Kreiss-Tomkins, speaking earlier Wednesday, said his campaign’s internal projections were that he’d receive between 51% and 52% of the vote when counting is complete. He said he had already begun planning his gubernatorial transition and said he planned to name an ideologically diverse set of transition co-chairs — a Democrat, a Republican and an independent — once there was “a little bit more public certainty” about the outcome of the race.
“I've had the fortune over the last week to start to think about what executive branch governance looks like and how we will want to build an administration if, in fact, once the votes are counted, the outcome is confirmed,” he said at a Resource Development Council conference in Anchorage.
The Associated Press has yet to call a winner.
Republican Congressman Nick Begich continues to hold a substantial lead in the U.S. House race and Ballot Measure 2, which would repeal Alaska’s voting system, continues to fail in the latest results. “No” leads with 52.5% of the vote.
