JUNEAU, Alaska — Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins leads the race for governor of Alaska after Tuesday's election, holding 103,837 first-choice votes in the Associated Press tally — well ahead of the three Republicans splitting the rest of the field, but short of the outright majority that would settle the race without a ranked-choice count. The AP lists Bernadette Wilson, the Trump-endorsed Republican, at 61,734 votes, former Anchorage mayor Dave Bronson at 30,003 and Treg Taylor at 15,763, with 303 of 403 precincts reporting and an estimated 75 per cent of the vote counted. The AP's call status remains 'Too Early to Call.'

The reason Alaska must wait is built into its election system. Under the state's top-four primary and ranked-choice general election, a candidate who wins more than 50 per cent of first-choice votes wins outright; if nobody clears half, the Division of Elections eliminates the lowest finishers and transfers their ballots to each voter's next choice in a tabulation scheduled for November 18, after mail ballots have had time to arrive. Kreiss-Tomkins sits just below that line — at 49.01 per cent in the fuller Wednesday tally published by The Alaska Story (103,610 votes, against 61,566 for Wilson, 29,900 for Bronson and 15,713 for Taylor) — close enough that the remaining ballots could still push him over 50 per cent, and close enough that they might not.

One Democrat against three Republicans

The structure of the race is the story. Democrats put a single ticket on the ballot — Kreiss-Tomkins with running mate Johnson, in the Alaska Division of Elections' official summary — while Republican first choices spread across three tickets: Wilson with Shower, Bronson with Church and Taylor with English. Together those three Republican tickets drew 107,179 first-choice votes, 50.70 per cent of the total, in The Alaska Story's Wednesday tally — more than the Democrat's share on his own. That is exactly the situation ranked-choice voting was designed for, and exactly why the first count cannot name a winner: the second choices of Bronson and Taylor voters, most of them Republicans, will decide whether the party's combined majority reassembles behind Wilson or leaks enough to Kreiss-Tomkins to elect him anyway.

What the preliminary ranked-choice count shows

FairVote, the nonpartisan election-reform organisation, published a preliminary ranked-choice tally on Wednesday built from the Division of Elections' cast vote record — an anonymised digital record of about 203,000 ballots, against about 215,000 ballots in the reported first-choice results. In that partial tally, Kreiss-Tomkins holds 48.5 per cent of first choices and defeats Wilson 55 to 45 in the final ranked-choice round, his margin shrinking by about 9.5 points once transfers are counted. FairVote itself stresses the caveats: the cast vote record is a subset of the ballots, the figures do not match the reported first-choice results one-to-one, and the leaders could change as the remaining ballots are counted over the coming days — completely apart from ranked choice.

Background: how Alaska counts, and why it takes until late November

Alaska's geography and mail rules make it one of the slowest-counting states in the country. Absentee ballots sent by mail can still arrive for days after Election Day — FairVote notes the state accepts absentee ballots up to 15 days after the election, a practice that predates ranked choice — and the Division of Elections counts early votes cast in the final days before the election later in the process. The Homer Independent Press, summarising the timetable reported by the Alaska Beacon, noted that the final unofficial results will not be available until November 18, when the Division performs the ranked-choice tabulation, with official results expected November 25. The state's own election-night summary, published at 12:11 a.m. on November 4 with 362 of 400 precincts reporting, already showed the same shape: Kreiss-Tomkins and Johnson at 101,611 votes (48.84%), Wilson and Shower at 61,003 (29.32%), Bronson and Church at 29,383 (14.12%) and Taylor and English at 15,468 (7.43%).

One of only two governor's races left in America

As of Wednesday evening, Alaska and Kansas were the last two uncalled governor's races in the country, according to Duane Morris Government Strategies' national roundup. Democrats, it reported, now hold 28 of the 50 governorships to 20 for Republicans, with those two outstanding — a majority of governorships for the first time since 2010 — after a night on which every Democratic governor on the ballot won, 36 states elected a governor and at least 19 of those seats were open, the largest turnover in governors' offices since 2010. If Kreiss-Tomkins's lead holds through the tabulation, he would be the first Democrat elected governor of Alaska since 1998 — a possibility Awaaz Punjab noted in its election-night coverage of the state's deadlocked Senate race, where Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican Senator Dan Sullivan by a few hundred votes in a count heading for the same November 18 tabulation.

What it means for Alaska — and what happens next

The governor of Alaska runs the state administration that maintains the highways and ferry links connecting the state's far-flung communities, oversees the state troopers, and sets the budget direction for a state where government is the largest presence in many towns — decisions that reach everyone from Anchorage's small Punjabi community to the truckers who haul freight on corridors like the Dalton Highway. The count resumes with scheduled updates as mail ballots arrive; if no candidate clears 50 per cent of first choices, the ranked-choice tabulation follows on November 18 and certification is expected around November 25. Until then, Alaska has a leader but not a governor-elect — and the second choices of voters who backed the two lowest Republicans will pick the winner.