Actually Pubs make up just about 26% of the electorate in Alaska - 128K(R), 75K(D) out of 493K registered). The majority, about 55%, are either undeclared or non-partisan.
Miller got about 56K in the primary in a close contest, slightly more than Lisa (not writing her last name). In the general, Miller got almost 70K, while "write-in" got about 83K. Clearly I doubt Miller lost many of those 56K and likely gained a few of Lisa's voters who were sticking with the party above Lisa. From there we can see a little of how the numbers broke.
"Miller, Joe" - 55878 "Murkowski, Lisa" - 53872That adds up to about 110,000 votes. Do they allow the independents to vote in the primaries? Because otherwise, it seems getting 110,000 out of 128,000 total republicans to show up for a primary would be rather remarkable.
In any case, usually in a general election, the primary winner will get more votes than the total votes cast in the primary -- because he'll get 90%+ of the primary voters, all of whom will show up since they are the active voters, plus he'll get the general-election republicans who don't care about primaries and just vote for the party in the general election.
In this case, unless a lot of primary voters failed to show up, it seems Murkowski held a good number of the primary voters; even if you assume Miller got ONLY votes from the primary voters, his 70,000 vote total suggests 40,000 republican votes for Murkowski.
So it seems a good number of republicans did NOT vote for Miller. The Democratic candidate got 48,000 votes, if you assume your number is accurate (75,000 democrat), and you assume he only got democrat votes, he'd have pulled down 64% of the registered democrats, which would be a good turnout.
But as you note, there are 493,000 registered voters, and 129,000 are republican, and 75,000 are democrat. The total vote cast was 203,000, or 41% of the electorate. So it is clear that each candidate must have gotten a good number of the non-partisans, because it is doubtful that republicans or democrats showed up 20% more than independents.
Also, it seems clear from the numbers that they must let independents vote in primaries, because I just can't imagine the republican turnout in the primary was 86%, but the total general election turnout was only 41%.
Oh well, it's just sad that in a state with 490,000 registered voters, the Miller campaign could only get 70,000 to vote for him, and could only get 14,000 more people to vote for him in the general election than voted for him in the primary.
Looking at the partisan numbers 125K vs 75K, it doesn't look like the democrat lost a lot of democrat votes to murkowski, if you assume Miller got most of the republican votes, then the democrat had to get most of the democrat votes plus a good number of independents to get to his 48,000 total. (if you assume the percentages would be the same, miller's 70,000/128,000= 54%, dems 48,000/75,000= 64%, which suggests either dems showed up more than reps, or miller got a lower precentage of republican voters than the dem got of democratic voters.
It seems clear that a lot of alaskans who are registered independent must lean one way or another.