By SUZANNE DOWNING
Nov. 10, 2026 — Mary Peltola widened her first-choice lead over US Sen. Dan Sullivan in Tuesday night’s Alaska election update, while Congressman Nick Begich maintained a substantial advantage over fake independent challenger Bill Hill.
The latest unofficial results put Peltola at 49.0% and Sullivan at 47.2%. Begich held 48.9% in the US House race, compared with Hill’s 41.0%.
Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins moved close to an outright first-choice majority in the governor’s race, reaching 49.9%. Republican Bernadette Wilson remained his nearest challenger at 28.8%.
The next results release is expected Friday, Nov. 13. Official ranked-choice tabulation is scheduled for Nov. 18.
Senate: A wider lead for Mary, with an incomplete ranked-choice picture
Tuesday’s newly released cast vote record contained an additional 24,617 ballots, according to an unofficial analysis. A cast vote record, or CVR, records voters’ selections and other rankings, allowing analysts to simulate ranked-choice rounds.
But the electronic file does not yet contain every ballot reflected in the statewide results.
In the Senate race, an unofficial simulation using only the available CVR still puts Sullivan ahead by roughly 700 votes after ranking transfers. The analysis identifies approximately 9,600 votes from hand-counted Election Day precincts missing from that file, and those precincts heavily favored Peltola.
Among the four listed Senate candidates, the missing precinct votes break down as follows:
| Candidate | First-choice votes missing from CVR |
|---|---|
| Mary Peltola | 6,432 |
| Sen. Dan S. Sullivan | 2,392 |
| Gerald Heikes | 582 |
| Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. | 241 |
Those votes give Peltola a net first-choice advantage of 4,040 over Sullivan.
Adding them to the CVR first-round figures produces an estimated 118,870 votes for Peltola and 114,583 for Sullivan — a Peltola lead of 4,287 among those figures.
Accounting for the omitted precincts could put Peltola ahead by roughly 3,400 votes, reversing Sullivan’s narrow lead in the CVR-only simulation.
The full rankings, exhausted ballots and remaining uncounted votes will determine the outcome.
The latest batch appears to consist largely of early votes from the weekend before Election Day, along with absentee ballots from selected House districts.
Peltola won the newly added early votes approximately 53.2% to Sullivan’s 43.7%.
Congressman Nick Begich retains a stronger position
Congressman Nick Begich’s position remains substantially stronger than Sullivan’s, with a first-choice advantage of nearly eight percentage points over Bill Hill.
There are 9,463 votes for House candidates missing from the CVR. Those votes favor Hill over Begich, 4,821 to 3,328, narrowing Begich’s advantage by 1,493 votes.
Even after adding those precinct figures, the reconstructed first-round totals put Begich at 118,355 and Hill at 99,288, a lead of 19,067 votes. Eric Hafner, the Democrat felon in New York prison, would have 18,178 and Jim McDermott 6,544.
Begich still remains below 50% in the reported statewide results. If that holds, transfers from eliminated candidates will determine whether he secures a majority of continuing ballots.
Governor’s race: Kreiss-Tomkins approaches 50%
Kreiss-Tomkins’ 49.9% puts him within a fraction of a percentage point of winning without transfers.
If he finishes with more than 50% of the first-choice vote, no elimination rounds would be needed to decide the governor’s race. If he remains below that threshold, the rankings will come into play.
