Be prepared to wait up to 15 days for results in any close Alaska elections, regardless of whether they use ranked choice voting (RCV). Alaska has a long history of an extended vote-counting period, preceding its adoption of RCV. The state accepts absentee ballots up to 15 days after the election – many of which arrive on the later end due to the size of the state, with a large number of voters living in areas accessible only by boat and plane. In addition, state law dictates that absentee ballots cannot be scanned before election night; this year, Governor Mike Dunleavy vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have changed this and sped up processing. 

In 2010, Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Senate win was declared at the end of the 15-day period. More recently, in 2024, Ballot Measure 2 – a “Yes/No” vote regarding Alaska’s election system – also took all 15 days. In this year’s choose-one gubernatorial primary, it took the entire vote-counting period – which is 10 days, rather than 15, for Alaska’s primaries – to declare that Republican Dave Bronson would advance to the general election. 

Alaska also has a lengthy history of preliminary results changing as more ballots are counted through the 15-day window. For example, Sen. Murkowski trailed challenger Kelly Tshibaka on election night in her 2022 reelection campaign; she “took the lead” after several days of vote-counting. In 2024, “No” trailed “Yes” on Ballot Measure 2 for several days, and overtook “Yes” in the final days of the 15-day window.

Read more on ranked choice voting in Alaska’s 2026 elections.

Ranked choice voting & the timeline for results in Alaska

As noted above, ranked choice voting is not responsible for delayed election results in Alaska. However, the Alaska Division of Elections officially reports only first-choice results during the 15-day absentee ballot window, and chooses to conduct its RCV tally once every ballot is received. The actual RCV tabulations take about one minute per race, and have been shared on livestreams in both 2022 and 2024.  

Even with this timeline, ranked choice voting races that are not close can be called well before the 15-day mark – whether a candidate wins a majority of first choices, or if the data overwhelmingly suggests the first-choice leader will win an RCV tally. 

Additionally, as former Alaska elections director Gail Feniumiai and Region III election supervisor Jeremy Johnson shared in a recent piece for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska could release preliminary round-by-round RCV results earlier. 79% of RCV jurisdictions across the country release those results on election night or the day after, and Alaska could do the same. 

Saying that RCV delayed results is false…. 

The division already does a great job of releasing updated first-choice totals throughout the two-week counting window. We encourage officials to explore running preliminary RCV eliminations alongside those regular updates.

– Gail Feniumiai and Jeremy Johnson,
Former Alaska elections director and Region III election supervisor

Notably, Alaska’s Division of Elections released preliminary cast vote record data – an anonymized digital record of all ballots cast – beginning a few days after Election Day in 2024, allowing election researchers and analysts to produce unofficial ranked choice voting results. Based on this data, Decision Desk HQ projected the 2024 U.S. House race several days before Alaska ran its official RCV tally (and several days before the “Yes/No” Ballot Measure 2 was decided). FairVote analysis of the data affirmed Decision Desk HQ’s projection. 

The Division of Elections has not yet announced whether it will release the preliminary cast vote record on the same timeline this year.