Mary Peltola, a Democrat, widened her lead over Sen. Dan S. Sullivan, a Republican, in the latest vote tally in Alaska’s Senate race, but the election remained uncalled Friday as the count continued.

If neither candidate wins an outright majority, the race will be decided by ranked-choice tabulation.

Peltola had 49.8% of the vote and led Sullivan by nearly 4 percentage points in incomplete results as of Friday night. She is on track to eventually prevail, according to a New York Times analysis.

The race between Sullivan, a two-term incumbent, and Peltola, a former member of Congress, is the only Senate battle still uncalled in a midterm cycle that featured sweeping Democratic victories.

“Alaskans have spoken, and it is clear that in the coming days Mary Peltola will be officially elected as their next United States Senator,” Peltola’s campaign said in a statement issued late Friday night in Alaska. “Mary got into this race to take on D.C. corruption, lower costs, and put Alaska first — and when elected, she will hit the ground running. This campaign was built by Alaskans hungry for a change in leadership, and Mary is ready to deliver.”

A spokesperson for Sullivan, Nate Adams, said Friday night after the latest release of results: “We’re still waiting for every ballot to be counted. And we’ll see what happens from there.”

The delay in Alaska is in part because of the time the state allows for mail ballots to be received and counted and in part because of the state’s unique ranked-choice system. Sullivan and Peltola faced two other candidates after emerging from a nonpartisan primary in August.

In Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, voters can rank the candidates on the ballot in order of preference. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their supporters’ second-choice votes are counted. The tabulation continues until two candidates are left; the candidate with more votes wins.

In Alaska, Peltola and Sullivan contended with Gerald L. Heikes, a Republican, and Dan J. Sullivan, an unaffiliated candidate with a similar name to the Republican senator. Heikes and Dan J. Sullivan have combined to win about 4% of the vote so far.

Democrats had recruited Heikes and Dan J. Sullivan onto the ballot in an effort to dilute Sen. Sullivan’s vote share. The Times analysis found that among voters who picked Dan J. Sullivan as their first choice, more selected Peltola as their second choice than picked Sen. Sullivan.

Peltola, a centrist whose campaign slogan was “fish, family and freedom,” would be the first Alaska Native elected to the Senate. She would also be the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Alaska in nearly two decades.

Democrats, riding widespread voter frustration with high prices in President Donald Trump’s second term, have won 55 Senate seats in the midterms, securing the largest majority held by either party since President Barack Obama’s first term.

Trump’s war in Iran and his tariff fight with Canada adversely affected Alaska, where voters faced particularly high gasoline prices. Sen. Sullivan decided to campaign with Trump, despite the president’s poor approval ratings, in a bid to activate conservative Republican voters.

Trump won Alaska by about 14 percentage points in 2024, but the state has been gradually shifting less Republican in presidential elections over the last quarter-century.

If Peltola were to win the Senate race, it would give Democrats 56 seats in the chamber, more than they have captured in any election since Obama won the presidency in 2008.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Tim Balk/Erin Schaff

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