“It comes down to one seat,” Alaska’s senior senator Ted Stevens said at a press conference on August 18. “That seat is key to the control of the Senate.” Stevens’s conclusion about Alaska’s Senate race this year might not be an exaggeration.

Alaska seems like an unlikely battleground in the fight for control of Senate–Alaskans have not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1974–but this year’s contest for the nation’s upper house could be among the most competitive in the country.