Premium Sponsor


Featured Sponsor


Our Sponsors


Ad Networks

Advertise Liberally

Buy an ad on all of the top liberal blogs with just one click.

Site Stats

AK-Sen: Begich Leads by 814 Votes

by: James L.

Thu Nov 13, 2008 at 1:02 AM EST


Zoom, zoom, zoom!

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)
James L. :: AK-Sen: Begich Leads by 814 Votes
Tags: , , (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email
AK-Sen: Begich Leads by 814 Votes | 45 comments
Quite optimistic...
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!
Bethel and Juneau
Looking at the numbers, Juneau delivered Begich's largest % of votes at 68.9%. Coming in 2nd was the Bethel district, nearly 62% Native Alaskan, which gave Begich over 65% of the vote.

That's probably at least 2 Senate elections in 2006 and 2008 we've won because of Native Americans and it would be great to continue to see Democratic outreach into those communities. I know Obama made them a key part of his campaign, so hopefully that will continue.  

[ Parent ]
What was the other Senate seat where the Native vote pushed us over?
I was thinking Montana but I can't figure it out on my own. But your definitely right that Dems should give a stronger voice to Natives in our states.

I never knew why Natives leaned Dem until I was forced to study the Indian Reorganization Act (known as the Indian New Deal) passed by FDR and Co. Just another reason to be proud of our party.

And I'm definitely not saying that Natives owe Dems for all eternity. If I had one request to make of Schumer and CVH, it would be to find Native candidates to run for office. Native Americans are more underrepresented then any other racial or sexual group at the federal level.

[ Parent ]
You probably mean South Dakota
Tim Johnson held his SD Senate seat in 2002 against Thune by a couple hundred votes thanks to the late Native reservation vote.
[ Parent ]
Well...
I think we do need to watch out for the Mat-Su. Afterall, let's remember that this area is "Palinland". Still, let's hope that Fairbanks can cancel them out on Friday. If Begich is still ahead on Friday, then he'll probably be set to win as it looks like the final votes will come from his home base of Anchorage.

C4O Democrats: A Place for All Democrats
[ Parent ]
That's true
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...

[ Parent ]
I feel good for Teddy
He now gets to spend all of his time fighting his conviction, rather than pretending to be a competent politician...
Wow! Senate Seat #58...
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! :-D

C4O Democrats: A Place for All Democrats
There's still Mat-su votes out?
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.
I thought that as well
from that post on dailykos earlier, it seemed they would be finished after today. FYI, the Anchorage Daily News has updated their story, so now it's very unclear which version is accurate.

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.

http://www.adn.com/elections/s...

Also, looking at Nate's analysis, I can't imagine Nome will deliver many more votes. So, much will depend on whether and how many votes exist in Mat-su. Begich just needs to survive the 20,000 absentee ballots.

[ Parent ]
Just from reading over the linked article...
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.

It's Over
Based on what I'm reading at Mudflats

Tens of thousands of votes have yet to be counted before the vote is certified.  But this batch gives us a clear indication of a trend.  Begich increased his numbers by a relative 4000+ votes, and took traditionally conservative districts in Anchorage's affluent "Hillside" area.

As we move forward, Alaska's "reddest" areas have already been counted.  Those outstanding districts are mainly rural and tend to go Democratic.  Friday will see more than 20,000 "question ballots" (provisional ballots) counted, and the remaining absentee ballots are slated to be counted Monday.


AP: Young wins
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.

How come no one....
is asking the elephant in the room question of how Berkowitz lost handily while Begich is in a nailbiter? The polls showed both doing very well for the last 4 months of the race and indeed it looked like Young was more likely to go down faster than Stevens? WTF happened? Why did the Dems underperform so bad in AK (same goes with Merkely in OR)?  
[ Parent ]
Begich v. Berkowitz
The Stevens conviction is the difference between Begich and Berkowitz.  Begich would have almost surely lost if Stevens had not asked for an expedited trial.  This explains why Begich did better than Berkowitz even though Berkowitz may have had better poll numbers before the Stevens conviction.

As to why they both underperformed their polls, I've seen speculation that Democrats became complacent after networks called election for Obama.  Not sure I buy that explanation.

Re Merkley, he didn't underperform by any significant margin.  538 projected him to win by 5; he actually won by 3.

[ Parent ]
Re: Begich v. Berkowitz
I don't disagree with the impact of the Steven's felony conviction, what I'm curoius about is that AFTER the conviction, Begich was polling much better only to end up with a nail biter.

Looking at the Young race: if both Young and Stevens are considered questionable politicians, I would at least have expected Berkowitz to make it closer rather than lose by 6-7 points, after polling so strongly.

Did the Dems stay home? Not sure why they would...Dems did not stay home even when Obama romped CA, OR, WA and HI...GOPers did not stay home in AZ or MT? I suspect either the poll respondents were lying that they'd vote for Berkowitz and/or Begich or that the polls seriously under sampled republicans.  

[ Parent ]
The Alaska media
trumpted up the possibility that Ted Stevens would be expelled from the Senate and thus lead to a special election almost certainly victorious for the GOP.

My guess is Republicans, even those revolted by Stevens and Young, voted for them because they thought it would be the best chance for another Republican to keep those seats. Instead of electing a Democrat to Congress, they'd elect a Republican who would get tossed and replaced by a better Republican.


Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens

[ Parent ]
In that case Alaskans are a weird bunch n/t

[ Parent ]
OR is completely mail in
so not a valid comparison.  
[ Parent ]
The latest from ADN
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.

Wow
That's the total opposite of what I read last night. I heard that Ted's stronholds were already in.
[ Parent ]
Kowalski's run down isn't entirely
accurate. Mat-su has to report, but Nome and another super-Democratic election area have yet to report. Fairbanks was a wash in the general election, both were about tied, so absentee votes could actually lean Democratic there if the general trend for this election holds true. Also, Begich's base of Anchorage has yet to report, though that was also pretty evenly divided, though absentee ballots should marginally favor Begich. It should all be enough, along with military ballots, for Begich to hold on narrowly.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Fairbanks=College
Agreed.  Fairbanks is a wash because of the large college population.  

And remember, the votes to be counted Friday are left-over absentee ballots--still a lot, but not nearly the flood that will come in when the rural north, west, and southeast are counted.

The updated counts by house district are now available:
http://www.elect.alaska.net/

Lots of good data, if you want to dig through it.  Short version:  it's looking good.  Look for the goose eggs on page 1 absentee and early votes: you'll see they are only in districts where Begich is winning.

[ Parent ]
also thje Bethel district
that was the native american district not in yet.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
From the article
But state Democratic Party spokeswoman Bethany Lesser said Begich workers are cautiously optimistic the lead would hold. She noted that the election district based in Nome, which covers Northern and Western Alaska, has not counted any of its absentee ballots yet. Begich beat Stevens in that area on Election Day, just as he did throughout Bush Alaska, a traditional Stevens stronghold that relies on federal appropriations.

[ Parent ]
but what about Sarah Palin?
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.
She'll be the frontrunner
In 2014!
[ Parent ]
Ugh I'm travelling tomorrow
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!
what i think is one of the biggest ironies
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?
I think it would hurt her
Is she goes to the Senate she'll have an extreme far-right voting record that can be thrown in her face.  She can more or less escape that as the Governor of Alaska.  Either way I do hope she runs again.  She's never going to win a national election.
[ Parent ]
Ah, one thing I learned
is that in reality, there is no such thing as a national election.  Think about it, the entire country does not together simply vote on a candidate.  Our "national elections" are really 50 state elections occuring at once.  We are all given completely different campaigns by each candidate and you dont win by winning more votes in the nation.  Something that is truly lacking in our democracy.
[ Parent ]
Obama's campaign will help in that respect
Obama is the only candidate I can think of who ran a 50 state Presidential campaign since maybe Clinton in 1992.  From that time until this year the candidates (winner and loser) focused on only a dozen or so states to squeeze out enough EV's to barely win.  Obama has donw Democrats around the country a great service in the long-run in running a real national campaign.  Voters in states such as the Dakotas, Montana and Georgia, previously ignored,  now feel as though Democrats care about their vote.
[ Parent ]
Remaining ballots
Remaining ballots are quite mixed around.

http://www.elections.alaska.go...

Is someone doing the math???
Is anyone taking the most recent numbers and plugging in the current percentages of absentee, early, and questioned ballots?

I would...but time is short tonight.

[ Parent ]
Stevens' own pollster predicts Begich will win.

Elections in Alaska are like old people having sex. It's slow and sloppy.
Do they only work every other day in AK or what? Hurry it up already. Absolutely zero votes counted today.
Probably
Do they only work every other day in AK or what?

Well it is a welfare state.

[ Parent ]
Begich was just on Rachel Maddow
He picked up another 24 votes to his lead.
Just did a lot of math
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.

The smell of victory...and trout.
Curious, were there any districts where Begich actually did better on Election Day than on absentees?
[ Parent ]
Not many
Back of envelope:  6 out of 40 were better for Begich on Election Day than absentee:

10
11
12
14--WASILLA!!!!  (34% in person, 32% absentee)
18
36

Here's a map to help:
http://media.adn.com/smedia/20...

[ Parent ]
I took a stab at questioned ballots
If you use the Nate Silver technique of discarding 1/3 of the ballots, and then using the overall percentage of all ballots, you get:
Begich: 4699
Stevens: 4748
Advantage Stevens:  49

In summary,
Current Lead: 814
Absentee predicted lead: 1792
Early predicted lead:  11
Questioned lead:  -49

Grand total:
Begich wins by 2568

[ Parent ]
would that 2568 be more or less than
1/2 per cent of the TOTAL votes cast? (the recount threshold)
[ Parent ]
just barely over
It all depends on how many questionable ballots are counted.  I'm going with two-thirds.

The difference is 0.65%.

2568/392214

[ Parent ]
AK Counting Schedule
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.

AK-Sen: Begich Leads by 814 Votes | 45 comments

Copyright 2003-2010 Swing State Project LLC

Primary Sponsor

Talk to your supporters, not tech support. Campaign Engine is the powerful, affordable Progressive Campaign Software.

Menu

Make a New Account

Username:

Password:



Forget your username or password?

About the Site

Publisher: DavidNYC

Senior Editor: James L.

Contributing Editor: Crisitunity

SSP's Twitter Feed

SSP on Facebook

SSP's Frappr Map

Search the SSP archives:

Sign up to receive a daily e-mail whenever the SSP is updated:

Subscribe to SSP's RSS feed: Subscribe via FeedBurner

SSP Resources

Presidential Vote by CD

Partisan Voting Index

House Open Seat Watch

SSP Document Collection

Race Tracker Wiki

2010 Political Calendar

SSP Race Ratings

Senate Race Ratings

Gubernatorial Race Ratings

House Vulnerability Index

Blogroll

Daily Kos
DemConWatch
DLCC Blog
Five Thirty Eight
From The Roots (DSCC)
Hotline On Call
Kicking Ass (DNC)
Political Wire
Pollster.com
Project 2010 (DGA)
The Next Hurrah
Senate Guru
The Stakeholder (DCCC)
The Thicket (NCSL)
Powered by: SoapBlox