I don’t believe the title needs further explanation.
Can you guess what this map is of?
The map up top is the 2008 race between Mark Begich and Ted Stevens, in which Begich prevailed by 1.25%.
If you guessed that correctly (without cheating), 10 points for Gryffindor. If you did cheat and look at the file name, boo on you too, but you can look at the Anchorage inset anyways:
Here’s a redux of the Murkowski-Miller race (blue for Murk, Red for Miller; Absentees not included):
And you can judge for yourself similarities between that at the 2008 GOP primary, Young-Parnell (Young in blue, Parnell in red):
I’m not that optimistic about Scott McAdams’ chances in November, but there does seem to be a path for him:
Areas of strong Begich performance are decently correlated with areas of strong Murkowski performance – or put differently – weaker Miller performance. Given that, this seems to bode somewhat better for McAdams, in that he could piece together the Begich coalition of Anchorage + Outlying Areas + Juneau for a win, pulling in disaffected Murkowski GOPers. Those areas (notably, GOP voters in those areas) weren’t exactly hopping for Miller.
are a bunch of angry bird’s heads
Than take an extreme long shot chance that McAdams can beat Miller. Miller will have 10x the money than McAdams will have, and I suspect Murkowski will come around to endorsing him in due time.
Miller had to be favored by double digits.
Murkowski was a reasonable Republican, and probably would have been even more reasonable with a new six year term in hand. Miller is a fringe nut, but will have the Palin machine and thus the Parnell machine behind him not to mention gobs of teabagger money coming his way.
At least in terms of enjoying the best quality cat fud out there, is that this will help the TPE turn its attention to Christine O’Donnell and Delaware. Now that Murkowski has officially conceded, they can turn their attention to their next victim… Michael Castle!
At least, that’s what an aspiring applicant to the CFS program hope..
1. Alaska is a very cheap state to campaign in.
2. We (or someone) raise $500,000 to pour into the state for McAdams.
3. Earmark a fair portion of that money to buy Lisa Murkowski’s contact lists off her (she has a price, I’m sure, and what good are they to her anymore?).
4. Use the rest to produce and place some ads that show just what a whackdoodle Miller is.
McAdams could easily squeak by.