The new tally:
| Candidate | Votes | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Lisa Murkowski | 51,358 | 49.22% |
| Joe Miller | 52,988 | 50.78% |
More updates as we get ’em.
11:50pm: Y’know, I get a lot of spam from the DSCC. It’s been well over an hour since Murkowski has conceded, and the DSCC has yet to put out a statement on the results. Quite the operation they’re running there.
11:33pm: It didn’t occur to me to mention this, but Murkowski also said she’d be “going home” to Alaska at the end of her term — so it’s pretty clear that she won’t be attempting a write-in campaign.
11:21pm: One final ballot update for the night — Miller added 628 votes and Murkowski added 467, bringing the gap to 1,630 for Miller. Which wasn’t far off from where we started the day at!
10:28pm: Murkowski just walked away from the podium without endorsing Joe Miller. Game on!
10:21pm: Murkowski just conceded to Miller.
9:41pm: Murkowski will hold a press conference in twenty minutes.
9:40pm: Being generous, let’s say there are 7000 valid GOP votes left to be counted. Murkowski would need 61% of them to win. She’s done.
9:18pm: Murkowski is basically toast at this point, as she just couldn’t get the juice she needed from Anchorage or the Southeast. 15,700 votes were counted today, and a number of Kenai absentees will be added to the total later in the evening. Murkowski would have to win an absurd amount of the uncounted GOP ballots (which has to be, what, 7K or so at most?) to pull this out. Not happening.
9:04pm: Miller adds 1,062 votes to Murkowski’s 803 in the latest update. Miller’s lead has shot up to 1,469 votes.
8:24pm: So that last batch of votes came from Southeast Alaska, the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks — 3,000 more votes from these areas are expected tonight, but it’s starting to look pretty grim for Murkowski.
8:08pm: And we’re back! Since we last checked in, Miller added 1,057 votes and Murkowski took 1,139. The gap is now 1,210 votes.
7:20pm: SSP is taking a temporary break from the liveblog, but we’ll be back shortly. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled on that DoE page!
7:08pm: We finally have a bit of movement — Miller picks up 353 votes and Murkowski adds 355. 50,241 to 48,949 for Miller.
6:50pm: The ADN reports that the next round of ballots to report will come from Southeast Alaska and the Kenai peninsula — about 5800 absentees and questioned ballots from areas where Murkowski is hoping to romp in. Following that, we’ll get a look at about 2750 votes from Miller-friendly Fairbanks.
5:54pm: In the comments, trhawk notes that it looks like the absentees from Anchorage HDs 27-32 have already reported, and possibly were bundled into the Mat-Su valley results. Murkowski won those HDs by nearly 55% on e-day, and if their absentees were lumped in with the Mat-Su update, that would explain why Murkowski appeared have run so much stronger in those Miller-friendly areas. Meanwhile, the ADN reports that Anchorage is done for the day, although 3000 questioned ballots and a “small number” of absentees remain to be counted there. The next round of votes to be counted will come from Juneau, followed by Fairbanks later in the evening.
5:24pm: Another update — Miller just added 322 votes, Murkowski 488.
5:19pm: From Shira Toeplitz:
There will be 1,273 fewer ballots processed today than planned. Election officials announced that a set of questioned ballots from four state House districts in the Mat-Su Valley area will be opened Friday instead of Tuesday. …During last Tuesday’s primary, the ballots in these four state House districts voted for Miller over Murkowski, 62 percent to 38 percent.
4:29pm: The Anchorage Daily News reports that the latest batch of absentees came from the Mat-Su valley, specifically House Districts 13 through 16. Crunching the numbers myself, on election day, Murkowski won 38% of the vote in those districts. Among the absentees, she’s picking up nearly 48% of the vote — a much bigger improvement than among the Anchorage absentees, but she still has a long way to go.
4:12pm: A bunch more votes just came in — we’re now at 49,566 for Miller and 48,106 for Murkowski. Miller added 1,515 votes and Murkowski added 1,380.
3:55pm: Mike Memoli tweets that Alaska DoE officials are expecting to count ballots until 10pm Eastern tonight.
3:36pm: Crunching the numbers using Jeffmd’s spreadsheet, Murkowski won House Districts 17 through 26 on election day by 53% of the vote. She won 57% from this batch of absentees.
3:25pm: Good news for Jumbo Joe Miller:
It looks like 2,391 votes were counted in this first batch. They’re from Districts 17 through 26, all Anchorage.
As noted below, Murkowski was expected to run strongly here. Miller-friendly areas will report later today.
3:16pm: It’s not yet clear where this batch of votes came from, but ADN reported that the first batch of results was expected to come from the Anchorage area, where Murkowski ran strongly. More votes are expected from the Mat-Su and Fairbanks regions later today, which are more Miller-friendly.
3:10pm: We now have our first update (of several to come) today. Miller added 1,024 votes to his tally today, and Murkowski added 1,367.
7000 absentees counted today? If so things look good for Miller; the needle barely moved at and the absentees are about half done now.
She picked up 343 votes out of the 2,391 counted wining 57.1% to Miller’s 42.9%.
At that rate Murkowski would need 9,237 more votes to be counted to over take Miller.
But of course there is no guarantee that the rest of the votes will come in at the same rate so my quick math is probably pretty useless.
Obviously, who knows where these absentee ballots came from. Miller had better hope they were just from pro-Murkowski areas. He only received 42.8%. If he receives 42.8% of all absentees/early/questionable ballots, he loses if there are more than 11,634 such ballots in total.
According to the Anchorage Daily News: “It looks like 2,391 votes were counted in this first batch. They’re from Districts 17 through 26, all Anchorage.”
Read more: http://community.adn.com/adn/n…
There is a long drawn out legal battle over a recount. I don’t see it beyond Murkowski to do this, so I just hope Miller leads by like 4 votes in the end.
Considering they’re 126,486 registered Republicans in Alaska, that’s a 75%+ turnout.
So Murkowski has gained slightly over 200 votes with 5000 counted. It isn’t looking good for her.
The Anchorage Daily News reports this latest batch of new ballots was from Districts 13-16 — the Mat-Su Valley (Palinland). Miller won 62.12% of the vote in those districts on Election Day, but he only won 52.33% of the new ballots from those districts. With all of today’s ballots, Murkowski is now out-performing her Election Day numbers in all districts that have been counted today by 5.9%. If that were to continue in all districts across the state, she would need a total of 16,690 new ballots to be counted to pass Miller.
especially if murkowski somehow comes out on top by, say, five votes? I could see murkowski stepping down so she can run again in a few years, but if miller is just slightly behind, i don’t see him backing down.
like the Mirkowski districts of 27-32 are in.
“Turn out the lights, the party’s over…”
Over half of the ballots counted today and Lisa Murk has only gained 374 – still trails by almost 1,300 and her strongest districts are in.
I want to double major in Advanced Cat Fud studies too.
probably just finished out HD 1-5 (for the day), and also brought in most if not all of HD 7,8,10,11, and 12. Still completely out are HD 6, 9, 35, and 36 which are all about 52.5% for Joe miller, and HD 33, and 34 which are about 61% miller.
I think that HD 37-40 are still out and they are ~75% for Murkowski. Problem for Murkowski though is that according to Jeffmd, Miller’s HD account for about 25% of the absentees(including 11% for just 33 and 34 alone), while Murkowski’s HD only account for about 2.6%.
were from HD 3, 6, 9, 33, and 36. HD 34 which is a big Miller district has according to hotline had 853 absentee and 160 questionable votes left still hasn’t reported.
I think that Mirkowski HDs 37-40 are left, and they have a combined 420 absentees and 540 questionable votes left.
But remember that HD 34 is 80% republican while 37-40 are about 60-70% democratic, so Miller should expand his lead a couple hundred more.
smart money says concede. hopeful money says RECOUNT!
Does anyone have a live feed for this press conference? I’d love to watch that live.
I would imagine she’s conceding, the question is, will she endorse Miller?
n/t
says Murkowski is conceding.
That was a nice speech.
Or their nominee.
I sense some cat fud 🙂
Big shocker there… /sarcasm
Palin shall be known from this day forward as the Murkowski killer.
You’d better hope Don Young ratchets up his pork wrangling.
If begich is the only source of pork for the state, it might bring him a few extra points in the polls, enough in a close race. I know pork probably didn’t help stevens, but it’s easier to give something up when they don’t know they have it.
It is in fact, MILLER TIME!
Coors fans
Does Murkowski do? Does she give her money over to the NRSC? Does she save it for a potential future federal race? I don’t care what she does personally, but I am eying that million+ that she could have used to save herself.
I doubt the no pork stuff will affect how Alaska votes much and I doubt it will save Begich in a few years. Alaska is just that conservative.