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Lisa Murkowski Still In Running, But Not Certain To Win

08/25/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
The biggest of the big news out of the primaries held on 24 August happened in the wee hours of the night as Alaska’s returns came in.  With 98% of the precincts in, it was beginning to look like Senator Lisa Murkowski was heading for a loss against the Sarah Palin backed Joe Miller.  Apparently, Murkowski did not qualify to be one of Palin’s “Mama Grizzlies”.  What may have been the driving force for Miller’s victory is that Alaska had to vote on a ballot measure which would require parental notification for teens seeking abortions.  This likely drove many people to the polls who would not have normally voted in the election.  That measure was approved by Alaska voters, but more people voted for it than did in the Senate race.

What this means for the Republican ability to capture the Senate in the long run is going to be impossible to fully account for, at least for the time being.  While Alaska is heavily Republican, the possibility is that the Democrats could be able to capitalize on this particular event in the same way that they did in 2008 with the defeat of the late Senator Ted Stevens and the victory of Mark Begich.

The victory of Miller is going to be hard to determine right away as there are some 16,000 absentee ballots yet to be counted, and that is more than ten times the number of votes that separate Miller and Murkowski.  Many of them may have been submitted before the recent push by Miller to paint Murkowski as being anti-life and pro-choice.  Thus, Murkowski could end up winning the election once all the ballots are counted.  Like Vermont, Alaska is a small state in terms of population and it can take a lot of time for a full victory to be assessed.  In Vermont’s Democratic Governor’s primary, the race was too close to call with almost all precincts in.