11.05.2014

Republicans win Alaska's Senate Seat



Sullivan lead holds in Alaska U.S. Senate race; Begich won't concede

Excerpt:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan appeared to grab an insurmountable lead over incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Begich early Wednesday, with all of Alaska's precincts reporting. With results from all 441 precincts counted, Sullivan led 49 percent to 45 percent. The margin remained essentially the same from the first returns early in the evening. Speaking just after midnight at his election night party in a packed ballroom at the Hotel Captain Cook, Sullivan praised his supporters and told them: “We are taking back our country!” “We’re still going to be respectful of the process,” Sullivan said. But he nonetheless touted Republicans’ successes in Senate races across the country Tuesday, and to hearty cheers, he proclaimed that the party had sidelined Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate. “We’re going to take back America, the land that we love,” Sullivan said, as the crowd erupted in chants of “USA! USA!” Shortly before midnight, Begich’s campaign issued a statement saying he wouldn't be commenting on the race until all the rural Alaska precincts were counted.
Comment: Official Election Results

12 comments:

  1. Buy my calculations, with 20,000 absentee ballots, the Democrat would need to get 70% of those to tie. Seems unlikely.

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  2. Update: Begich faces daunting math to beat Sullivan in Alaska U.S. Senate race:

    Numbers released by Alaska elections officials Wednesday morning show that incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich would have to win a substantial majority of the uncounted absentee and other outstanding ballots in his race against Republican Dan Sullivan.

    ...
    With 100 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, Sullivan led Begich by about 8,000 votes.

    State elections officials said there were nearly 24,000 uncounted absentee and early votes, which won’t be tallied until next week. There are also 13,804 absentee ballots that voters had requested but not yet returned to the state, though it was unclear how many of those would ultimately end up being counted.

    Then there are questioned ballots -- typically cast by Alaskans who voted at the wrong location. Elections officials won’t know how many questioned ballots were cast until Thursday, but there were roughly 13,000 in the last midterm election, in 2010.

    To beat Sullivan, Begich would have to take 8,000 votes from Sullivan out of all the outstanding ballots -- which appear unlikely to top 50,000 total.

    “The math is clearly not on Begich’s side,” Sullivan’s campaign manager, Ben Sparks, said in a phone interview.

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  3. Update: Uncounted vote totals in U.S. Senate race remain in flux

    The two campaigns have sparred over the last few days about whether Begich should concede the race. Sullivan’s campaign has pressed media outlets to call the race, while Begich’s campaign has refused to concede, saying all votes should be counted.

    And three Alaska Native groups issued a joint statement late Thursday saying that “the election isn’t over until ‘rural Alaska sings.’”

    An analysis by Alaska Dispatch News and the Alaska Public Radio Network show that if all the uncounted votes reported by state elections officials follow district level voting patterns, Sullivan would increase his lead.

    But those projections could change if a large block of early votes come in from the early voting locations in rural Alaska.

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