Any way Begich hangs on?

[Free Bird]

Just curious. I like him, actually, so if he somehow wins he can stick around and I won't mind. But I don't see that happening barring an absentee landslide.

[Lief 🗽]

There's like a 5% chance.

[Antonio the Sixth]

My feeling about this:

[Consciously Unconscious]

The remaining votes just aren't likely to go for him by the margin he needs.

[King]

He hasn't already lost?

[Free Bird]

The remaining votes just aren't likely to go for him by the margin he needs.

What does he need?

[mypalfish]

Nat Herz @Nat_Herz  ·  3h 3 hours ago
If house districts voted like they did Tuesday in #AKsen, Sullivan lead grows by 1,100 out of 22,000 early/absentees: http://www.adn.com/article/20141105/begich-refuses-concede-us-senate-race-citing-uncounted-rural-alaska-votes …

[RI]

Nat Herz @Nat_Herz  ·  3h 3 hours ago
If house districts voted like they did Tuesday in #AKsen, Sullivan lead grows by 1,100 out of 22,000 early/absentees: http://www.adn.com/article/20141105/begich-refuses-concede-us-senate-race-citing-uncounted-rural-alaska-votes …

Alaska absentees almost always are more Dem than election day. There just aren't enough of them to change the results though.

[Free Bird]

Nat Herz @Nat_Herz  ·  3h 3 hours ago
If house districts voted like they did Tuesday in #AKsen, Sullivan lead grows by 1,100 out of 22,000 early/absentees: http://www.adn.com/article/20141105/begich-refuses-concede-us-senate-race-citing-uncounted-rural-alaska-votes …

Meaning?

[Ljube]

Just curious. I like him, actually, so if he somehow wins he can stick around and I won't mind. But I don't see that happening barring an absentee landslide.

I like him too, but I like Sullivan better.

[Fuzzybigfoot]

Nat Herz @Nat_Herz  ·  3h 3 hours ago
If house districts voted like they did Tuesday in #AKsen, Sullivan lead grows by 1,100 out of 22,000 early/absentees: http://www.adn.com/article/20141105/begich-refuses-concede-us-senate-race-citing-uncounted-rural-alaska-votes …

Meaning?

It means Begich is screwed.

[Maxwell]

I still can't imagine a Begich win, though he did perform way better than I expected him to. He ran a near flawless campaign and he should probably run against Murkowski in the hopes that Joe Miller beats her in a primary again.

I mean, think about this - Alaska is an R+12 state, about as Republican as Arkansas (R+14) and Louisiana (R+12) and far more Republican than North Carolina (R+3), Iowa (D+1), and Colorado (D+1). And yet, Mark Begich is only losing by 49-45, compared to Pryor's 17 point loss, Landrieu barely hitting 40%, and even Bruce Braley only getting 44% in Iowa. If Mark Begich's state were less outstandingly Republican, he would've held on and be an eternal Senator.

Even John Barrow lost by 10 in only an R+9 District.

Mark Begich - One of the Democrats most talented politico's.

[Lincoln Republican]

Congratulations Senator Elect Sullivan!

[ElectionsGuy]

Nah. He's going down with Landrieu, which probably means Republicans will pick up a total of 9 seats when all said and done.

[Torie]

Any historical track record of how much late votes were more Democratic precinct by precinct, or whatever, than earlier counted votes?  It would need to be a big discrepancy in favor of the Dems to make the math work for Begich. The late votes were more Dem last time than earlier counted votes, although not enough to close the gap for Begich if replicated by a couple of thousand  votes, but that is raw numbers, not corrected for whether or not late counted votes were disproportionately from precincts favoring one party or the other. Intuitively one would think late votes are more more Dem precincts, in which event Begich is fried per the above number crunching projection, but sometimes intuition about a state you know next to nothing about psephologically, is a fail.

[Hash]

My feeling about this:

A++, excellent use of excellent meme from the best movie in generations.

[RI]

Any historical track record of how much late votes were more Democratic precinct by precinct, or whatever, than earlier counted votes?  It would need to be a big discrepancy in favor of the Dems to make the math work for Begich. The late votes were more Dem last time than earlier counted votes, although not enough to close the gap for Begich if replicated by a couple of thousand  votes, but that is raw numbers, not corrected for whether or not late counted votes were disproportionately from precincts favoring one party or the other. Intuitively one would think late votes are more more Dem precincts, in which event Begich is fried per the above number crunching projection, but sometimes intuition about a state you know next to nothing about psephologically, is a fail.

For reference, here's a Election Day vs. Early/Absentee votes for the 2008 Senate race by HD:



Here's the 2010 US House race by HD:



In both cases, the early/absentee vote leaned more Dem than the election day vote, but the lean was much more pronounced in 2008.

[cinyc]

Any historical track record of how much late votes were more Democratic precinct by precinct, or whatever, than earlier counted votes?  It would need to be a big discrepancy in favor of the Dems to make the math work for Begich. The late votes were more Dem last time than earlier counted votes, although not enough to close the gap for Begich if replicated by a couple of thousand  votes, but that is raw numbers, not corrected for whether or not late counted votes were disproportionately from precincts favoring one party or the other. Intuitively one would think late votes are more more Dem precincts, in which event Begich is fried per the above number crunching projection, but sometimes intuition about a state you know next to nothing about psephologically, is a fail.

Begich turned a 3,000 vote election night deficit into a 4,000 vote victory in 2008.   But there were 90,000-100,000 outstanding post-election day votes in 2008.  This time, there are only 50,000 at most - and that's probably optimistic.

In 2008, Begich won absentees by 6.7 points and the early vote by 21.4 points.  So far, in this election, Begich is LOSING absentees by 6.9 points and only winning the early vote by 8.7 points.  Granted, there are more absentee and early votes to count, and the current margin might not be representative of the final margin, but I doubt the margins will swing by 15 points.  There also are an unknown number of questioned votes.  In 2008, Begich only won them by 3.3 points - slightly better than his overall margin, but not terribly so.

Baring some huge miracle, Begich is toast.

[RI]

I think I found an error in HD 38's results that puts about 100 more votes toward Sullivan and Parnell.

[cinyc]

I think I found an error in HD 38's results that puts about 100 more votes toward Sullivan and Parnell.

Where?  There's a definite error in 38-812 Chefornak.  There's no way minor party candidate Ted Gianoutsos won the precinct with 174 votes.  Those votes are likely Begich's, giving him another 170, if the two results were switched.  Begich currently has only 4 votes there.

[Free Bird]

So the common consensus here is that the GOP is getting Uncle Ted's seat back?

[KCDem]

Sullivan favored, but Begich still has a 5% chance.

[RI]

I think I found an error in HD 38's results that puts about 100 more votes toward Sullivan and Parnell.

Where?  There's a definite error in 38-812 Chefornak.  There's no way minor party candidate Ted Gianoutsos won the precinct with 174 votes.  Those votes are likely Begich's, giving him another 170, if the two results were switched.  Begich currently has only 4 votes there.

You're probably right; I think I read it incorrectly.

[Cryptic]

As the others say, 5% chance or so.  It'll narrow, but he'll almost certainly still come up short.

[The Vorlon]

Just curious. I like him, actually, so if he somehow wins he can stick around and I won't mind. But I don't see that happening barring an absentee landslide.

Begich won the non-election day vote buy about 10% in 2008.

There are (reportedly) about 25,000 uncounted votes so Begich "should" gain +/- 2500 votes from the outstanding ballots. 

He is about 8000 votes behind so it does not look good.

That being said, Labor Unions, environmentalists, etc poured a sh*tload of money into GOTV, so who knows.....

Apparently Alaska was a $60 million dollar race in a state of under 600,000 people... that is... mind numbing actually