Peltola tells supporters the count will take weeks in a race she leads by 626 votes

Mary Peltola told supporters Tuesday night that "we are winning our state back" and that the results of her U.S. Senate challenge to Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan would take weeks.

By early Wednesday, with 394 of 401 precincts reporting, Peltola led Sullivan by 626 first-choice votes in the Division of Elections' unofficial count, 48.02% to 47.73%. Two other candidates, Republican Gerald Heikes and Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., an unaffiliated candidate who shares the senator's name, had 4,821 and 3,583 votes. If no one has a majority once all eligible ballots are counted, the division plans to run its ranked-choice tabulation Nov. 18.

Peltola, a Democrat, won Alaska's U.S. House seat in 2022 and lost it in 2024. Sullivan is seeking a third term.

"It won't be hours, it won't be days, it will be weeks," Peltola told the crowd. "This is Alaska normal." She said the count would take in votes "from every far-flung hinterland community," from service members overseas and from college students.

When she spoke, Peltola said barely over 20% of the vote had been counted and that votes "trend the way the early votes have come in." In the count early Wednesday, she led the early and absentee ballots counted so far, 28,192 to 20,566 and 4,777 to 3,420. Sullivan led the Election Day vote 78,089 to 69,732.

The division is still counting eligible absentee, early and questioned ballots. Absentee ballots mailed within the U.S. and postmarked by Election Day can arrive through Nov. 13, and overseas ballots through Nov. 18. The state is targeting Nov. 25 for certification.

Peltola also said Alaskans were "breaking records" in turnout, both in early voting and on Election Day. The state listed 67,935 early ballots by midday Tuesday. That's far more than the 37,559 in the 2022 midterm, but fewer than the 73,146 in the 2024 presidential election. In Bethel, Peltola said, a lifelong poll worker said she had never seen turnout like this since statehood. The unofficial count showed 1,166 Election Day ballots at Bethel's two precincts, about the same as the 1,156 there in 2024.

"No one from the Lower 48 is going to tell us anything about ourselves or our state," Peltola said. She said the people in the room did not care "how much money Elon Musk has put into this race." Alaska's 2026 races have drawn at least $210 million in reported money, about three-quarters of it in the Senate race, according to state and federal filings. A state filing this summer showed a group gave $1 million to the campaign to repeal ranked-choice voting and named Musk as a true source of its money.

Peltola said more than 17,000 Alaskans had worked on her campaign. She cited fisheries, Social Security, health care, education and housing, saying she wanted fish "out of the clutches of corporate greed, and back into our freezers and our fish racks." She said every one of the more than 50 communities she visited told her they need housing, and that people told her "every single thing we buy is twice or three times more."