Update 2: Yes He Did, Begich Takes Lead (by 3 votes)

by: tremayne

Wed Nov 12, 2008 at 19:26


See Update below (via mpcloat in Quick Hits)

Somehow, contrary to pre-election polling, incumbent felon Ted Stevens leads challenger Mark Begich in votes tallied so far in their race for Senate:

Stevens: 106,594

Begich: 103,337

The good news for Begich is that those 210,000 votes only represent about 70 percent of the votes cast in the election. Another 90,500 votes remain to be counted and they break down this way (rounded):

61,000  absentee votes

20,000 questioned ballots

9,500 early votes

Now, the early votes probably skew to Begich. According to the Alaska Democratic Party he carried 59 percent of the early votes already counted. They say Democrats were encouraged to vote absentee as well. Republicans in Alaska say they had an advantage of 10,000 in voters requested absentee ballots.

The "questioned ballots," if they skew the way provisional ballots often do, will favor Democrats.

Today at least 50,000 of the early and absentee votes will be counted. If Begich has a shot at overcoming the 3,257 vote deficit we should know by the end of the day.

Update: New Tally:

Stevens:  118,602

Begich:  117,631

That's less than 1,000 vote difference with more than 60,000 ballots remaining to be counted.

Update 2:

Begich:  125,019

Stevens: 125,016
tremayne :: Update 2: Yes He Did, Begich Takes Lead (by 3 votes)

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Update 2: Yes He Did, Begich Takes Lead (by 3 votes) | 30 comments
Ok (0.00 / 0)
So I'm a good loyal democrat and I really do want Begich to win... but I can't help myself.  The thought of the GOP having to kick Ted "Tubes" Stevens out of the senate and the following special election where Alaska elects a whack job diva and ship her off for the entertainment of the DC media are ... well ... I must be a political voyeur of the worst order ... because that sounds like fun as all get out, you betcha, dontchaknow.    
I woudln't be a special election. (0.00 / 0)
In all but a couple of states (and I'm 95% sure Alaska isn't one of them), when a senator has to vacate a seat the governor appoints someone to serve the rest of the term.

So no thrill of voyeurism, just a lameass senator who's safe for 5.75 years no matter what.

Not feeling very optimistic--absentee ballots typically skew Republican pretty heavily.  Everywhere I saw Obama did much better in the in-person early vote than in early+absentee.  And many of those absentee votes would've been mailed in before Stevens was convicted.  But I guess we'll find out.

[ Parent ]
I think Alaska has special elections now (4.00 / 1)
In all but a couple of states (and I'm 95% sure Alaska isn't one of them), when a senator has to vacate a seat the governor appoints someone to serve the rest of the term.

if only because of what happened in 2002 (when incoming Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed his daughter to his former seat). That's what I've read in a few places. It was also speculated that voters chose Stevens so that they could have a special election and replace him with another Republican. I don't know how the special election would work (i.e. if non-Republicans would be eligible to run), but I know the possibility of a special election is why so many are frightened about the thought of Sen. Palin!  

[ Parent ]
Alaska's one of them (0.00 / 0)
Giving Ted the boot = special election.

I don't like our chances in that scenario, though.

[ Parent ]
I stand corrected then. (0.00 / 0)
Though would still prefer a Democrat winning now.
[ Parent ]
This shows why we need audits (4.00 / 4)
These election results cannot be presumed to be accurate.  The questions go much further than uncounted ballots.  No matter what the eventual reported outcome, this entire election in Alaska will be under a cloud.  

All election results should have mandatory audits (hand counts of a subset of paper ballots using statistical principles) to confirm or call into question the accuracy of reported results.  There could be malfunctions of the system, tampering could have occurred or the Alaskan electorate could just be very quirky.  Without audits, we will never know what the true story is.

A good set of principles for audits has been developed by a national collection activists and experts.

 http://electionaudits.org/prin...

Confused (0.00 / 0)
Why would these election results be under a cloud, exactly?

There is a well-understood reason why the first results differed so wildly from these new results-- different groups of people were more or less likely to vote absentee versus normal. And the votes not represented in the initial tally were damn near 30%.

[ Parent ]
Because the 2008 participation was lower than 2004, maybe? (0.00 / 0)
The Alaskan election have been under suspicion for years now. In 2004, the Dems sued for getting the raw data, the government stonewalled, any nobody could ever make sense of the vote count. This year, there are multiple anomalies in the election results, too, most prominently the huge difference between exit polls and actual votes. Read the bradblog or google for more info.
[ Parent ]
That makes sense (0.00 / 0)
But are the participation tallies still lower even after we count in that 30% of the vote that started getting counted yesterday?
[ Parent ]
Begich will need to win remaining ballots by exactly 51.8% (4.00 / 2)
to win by exactly one vote.  That's assuming exactly 90,500 votes are left to be counted.  Using the awesome power of excel, I calculated that Begich would win 150216 to Stevens 150215.  Now that would be poetic justice.
Especially since... (4.00 / 4)
...the one missing vote would be that of Senator Stevens himself, who, as a convicted felon, couldn't cast a ballot.  
[ Parent ]
two'fr poetic justice! (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
Not correct... (4.00 / 3)
He was able to vote because he has not been sentenced yet.  
[ Parent ]
10,000 more absentee ballots requested by R's may be good news. (4.00 / 2)
Exit polls show 20% D, 39% R, and 41% I.  Based upon that breakdown, Republicans would have gotten 11,590 more ballots.  If they really have only 10,000, there might be a slight pro-Begich skew to the absentees.
Stevens Conviction (0.00 / 0)
but were many of those ballets sent in before he was convicted? Does anyone know when absentee voting started?
[ Parent ]
Polls (4.00 / 1)
Begich was ahead in the polls for a long time preceding the election. Stevens only started getting close shortly before his conviction. I don't think the fact that these votes were early is necessarily a bad thing.
[ Parent ]
lead down to 971, per adn.com (0.00 / 0)
He's in the LEAD!!!! (4.00 / 3)
BY THREE VOTES!

Begich, Mark DEM 125019 47.24%

Stevens, Ted REP 125016 47.24%

Time to stop counting the votes! :) (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
they should have stopped 2 votes ago! (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
does begich have (4.00 / 1)
a chance to defeat stevens, in alaska they say you betcha, thanks sarah for the heads up.
BEGICH LEADS BY 3 VOTES! (4.00 / 2)
Via Olbermann.  No link yet.

Saxby Chambliss, worse than disgraceful; he's reprehensible.  
here's a link (0.00 / 0)
http://www.adn.com/elections/s...

in the Alaska paper.

New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.

[ Parent ]
Link (0.00 / 0)
[ Parent ]
Consistent allocation rate is also encouraging (4.00 / 2)
One of the things that struck me about the update is how consistent the allocation between the campaigns has been today.  

From votes counted from the first update, Begich received 54.35% and Stevens received 45.65%.  

From the second update, Begich received 53.53% and Stevens received 46.47%.

Overall, they broke out 54.06% for Begich and 45.94% for Stevens.

There is very little movement in these numbers.  This is a really good sign for the potential distribution of the remaining votes.

especially since (0.00 / 0)
they reportedly came from all over the state rather than just certain districts.
[ Parent ]
Agreed (0.00 / 0)
In addition, from what I have read, the remaining districts to report on Friday all had a somewhat Begich lean.
[ Parent ]
Following up (0.00 / 0)
I finally got around to running the 3rd update from yesterday.  Of the 2-party vote, it broke out 52.99% for Begich and 74.01% for Stevens.  A little tighter, but, again, very stable, with the overall allocation from all 3 updates at 53.79% for Begich and 46.21% for Stevens.  

Overall, between rejected ballots and third party votes, it appears that approximately 89% of votes went to one of these two candidates (though I am using rounded numbers, so this could be off a bit, but probably not that much).  

Assuming about 30,000 remain and applying this 89% 2-party allocation, Stevens would need to win approximately 52% of the remaining valid 2-party ballots to overcome the deficit.  To put that into perspective, he only won 50.78% of the 2-party vote in the initial count.  

Given the very stable reports from yesterday and the need for Stevens to out perform his election day totals, it is hard to imagine Stevens making such a dramatic shift in the last batch of ballots.  So, I agree with Chris and others that, without something really fishy going on, I just cannot see this going back to Stevens.  In fact, the numbers seem to point to a Begich win by approximately 2100 votes when all is said and done.

[ Parent ]
Four votes? (4.00 / 1)
Did Stevens vote?  Since he's a convicted felon and all, his vote shouldn't count, right?
BEGICH UP BY 814 VOTES!!! (4.00 / 1)
Check it:

www.elections.alaska.gov/08general/data/results.pdf

Enough said.  

Update 2: Yes He Did, Begich Takes Lead (by 3 votes) | 30 comments
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