Mark Begich made a dramatic comeback Wednesday to overtake Ted Stevens for the lead in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.
Late Wednesday night, Begich led Stevens by 814 votes — 132,196 to 131,382 — with the state still to count roughly 35,000 more ballots over the next week.
The state Division of Elections tallied about 60,000 absentee, early and questioned ballots on Wednesday. The ballots broke heavily in Begich’s favor, erasing the 3,000-vote lead that Stevens had after election night last Tuesday.
That leaves an additional 20,000 absentee ballots and 15,000 questioned ballots to be scrutinized and counted. The Anchorage Daily News gives us a timeframe:
The regional election districts centered in the Mat-Su Valley, Nome and Fairbanks will count their remaining ballots Friday. The Southcentral regional election district, based in Anchorage, plans to count ballots between Monday and Wednesday.
As you can see from ADN’s results map, in the results tallied so far, the Mat-Su Valley went strongly for Stevens, while Nome went about as strongly for Begich. Fairbanks was a bit of a wash, and both candidates have different pockets of support in Southcentral. Overall, though, our friends at 538 feel good about the numbers so far. I’m optimistic, too.
Update: ADN has revised the quoted section above to the following:
Most regional elections headquarters will count their remaining ballots on Friday. But the most populous region, based in Anchorage, won’t count its ballots until either Monday or Wednesday, state elections chief Gail Fenumiai said.
So I’m a little unclear as to where exactly these remaining votes are coming from, although the article states that the Nome-based election district (northern and western Alaska, where Begich romped) has yet to count any of its absentee ballots at all.
One More Update: The AP still hasn’t declared a winner in the state’s at-large House race, but the odds of Don Young losing seem slim to none. After today’s flood of new votes, The Donald currently sits on a 15,000-vote lead. That number didn’t budge much from Young’s earlier 17K lead. So, if there are indeed 35,000 absentee and questioned ballots left to be counted, Berkowitz would have to win a bit over 70% of those outstanding votes (assuming that all those questioned ballots are counted — which isn’t going to happen). Given the relatively minimal movement in Berkowitz’s favor compared to Begich’s pickup, is this at all possible? I very much doubt it. Perhaps there are even more absentee or provisional ballots floating around that could bump that number up, but even still, it’s hard to see a path for a Berkowitz miracle here.
Nail-in-the-Coffin Update: The AP calls the race for Young. (H/T: Progressive America)
814 votes is actually a pretty big gap and it appears the rest of the votes are all in Begich-friendly areas. The Native Alaskans out in the north and west as well as the Juneau and surrounding vote delivered this win. Begich was a particularly strong candidate since he could hold Stevens somewhat even in Anchorage and the surrounding suburbs, which seems to be the key to Democratic statewide victories in the state. Anyway 58 definitely sounds so much sweeter than 57, so let’s pull this one out!
He now gets to spend all of his time fighting his conviction, rather than pretending to be a competent politician…
Looks to be going our way! As long as Begich survives the onslaught of Mat-Su Valley votes on Friday, he’ll be on his way to Washington! 😀
I thought the remainders were all Bush and rural. Oh boy. Still no provisionals though and the ones not thrown out will break towards Begich no doubt.
It appears the state has counted all the early in-person votes and all the absentees received before election day. So all that’s left are the provisionals (surely to break for Begich) and the absentees received after election day.
A plus for us is that zero of the Bush has reported so far — regardless of when the votes were mailed in. Therefore, although their chunk of the electorate is relatively small compared to Alaska as a whole, a bigger proportion of it still has to be counted than anywhere else.
Based on what I’m reading at Mudflats
I saw this article with the AP declaring Young the winner in AK-AL.
http://ap.google.com/article/A…
There’s always 2 years when my guess is Young will be in even further trouble.
The next batch of votes is supposed to be from Ted’s strongholds: Fairbanks and the Mat-SU with next week’s final coming mostly from Anchorage.
Begich tok all four military bases (respect for the law?) so military absentee votes may break in his favor.
Although this has twists and turns, it would seem to be overall in Begich’s favor. Both Ivan Moore, a Democratic pollster and Stevens pollster believe that Begich is likely to win.
the media was just warming up to Gov Palin running for the open seat once Ted Stevens was expelled from the Senate. And she was already checking with God to see if he would lend his support.
Is anyone feeling generous enough to send text messages to my mobile phone and keep me updated? If so, send me an email and I’ll give you my number. Thanks!
of this election is that after almost 50 years where a sitting senator couldn’t win the white house and the US senate was considered a presidential graveyard – there is a big chunk of observers suggesting that palin needs to get into the US Senate if she wants to run for president in the future. isn’t that ridiculous?
Remaining ballots are quite mixed around.
http://www.elections.alaska.go…
Looking at the 538 analysis, they actually give Stevens an advantage on the provisional ballots of about 250 votes as well. Guess it might all come down to Anchorage and if there’s a distinction between early absentee and late absentee.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com…
Do they only work every other day in AK or what? Hurry it up already. Absolutely zero votes counted today.
He picked up another 24 votes to his lead.
Thank you Excel.
ABSENTEE VOTES:
The state says there are 25620 absentee ballots left.
Based on the percentages of the already counted absentee ballots in 33 districts and the overall results in 7 districts which haven’t counted any absentee ballots (probably underestimating Begich’s advantage), I predict:
Begich: 12964
Stevens: 11172
Begich advantage: 1792 (wow!!!)
EARLY VOTES:
There are only 169 in Begich-leaning districts.
Begich: 85
Stevens: 74
Begich advantage: 11 (I’ll take what I can get)
IMPORTANT NOTE:
This does not include 14932 questioned ballots. I’ll late Nate Silver or someone more experienced decide what to do with them. What to include, how many, how they’ll break, etc.
I’ll gladly email someone my spreadsheet, if they want to play with the data as they would like.
http://www.elections.alaska.go…
40,721 left to go if all question ballots are counted. Hard to say if the questions have been resolved yet. According to this schedule, there will be 11,000 or so counted Friday, 24,000 on Tuesday, and 5,000 somewhere in between. The deadline is Wednesday, so there’s no need to rush…
Region 1, Juneau
Question ballots, Friday, 1 PM, 511
Absentee ballots, Tuesday, 9 AM, 8,357
Region 2, Anchorage
All remaining ballots, Tuesday, 10 AM , 15,709
Region 2, Wasilla
Question ballots, Friday, 8 AM, 2,751
Absentee ballots, Friday, 1 PM, 2,431
Region 3, Fairbanks
Question ballots, Friday, 11 AM, 2,362 (and maybe some of the absentees, like, also.)
Absentee ballots, Monday, 10 AM, 5,006
Region 4, Nome
All remaining ballots, Friday, 8 AM, 3,594
Nome – “Git ‘er done” territory.