Alaska election officials plan to publish another update to the state’s unofficial election results late Tuesday afternoon.
Last Thursday, they finished tallying first place votes from regular ballots cast in person on Election Day. The 217,835 ballots counted so far also include some early vote and absentee ballots.
That represents about 36% of all registered voters. Turnout in the last midterm election in 2018 was about 50%.
The Alaska Division of Elections has tens of thousands of ballots waiting to be counted, with potentially thousands more on their way in the mail. Most absentee ballots sent by mail are valid if they were postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 18. Absentee ballots coming from overseas have until Nov. 23 to arrive.
Nov. 23 is also the date of the ranked choice tabulation process, which should settle races where no candidate has a majority of first place votes. That includes Alaska’s U.S. House and U.S. Senate races. In the Senate race, Republican Kelly Tshibaka leads incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski by 2,933 first-pick votes.
In the House, incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola is a few percentage points short of winning outright with a majority. Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich split about half of the overall first-pick votes.
In the governor’s race, Republican incumbent Mike Dunleavy has about 52% of the vote so far. If that holds, he’ll win outright.
State officials are aiming to certify the election results on Nov. 29.
