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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is running for the state’s at-large congressional district in November, has pleaded with her Republican challenger to drop his bid to avoid splitting the state’s GOP votes. Nick Begich III, a businessman and member of the politically prominent Begich family, was a GOP candidate alongside Palin in the Aug. 16 special election to fill the House seat, which became vacant after longtime Republican Rep. Don Young died in office in March. State law required that a special election for the seat be held within five months of an intra-term vacancy, even as the 2022...

Election nerds like numbers. They love charts, spreadsheets, tabs, data, and models. This is a numbers story for the election nerds in all of us, even the mathematically challenged. It’s about who asked for absentee ballots and who turned out to vote early, easy data points from which even Common Core math survivors can glean conclusions: The first day of early voting in 2014 saw 1,698 people turn out to cast their ballot at an early voting location. It was an exciting year with a U.S. Senate race that featured Dan Sullivan challenging Sen. Mark Begich. Alaska also had the...

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker announced Friday he is dropping his bid for re-election and endorsing Democrat Mark Begich against Republican Mike Dunleavy. Walker made the announcement Friday afternoon at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention, three days after former Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott stepped down from both his office and the re-election campaign over unspecified "inappropriate comments" he made to a woman.

Finally. An additional 7,286 votes were added to the Alaska Senate totals today so far. And while Begich received almost 58% of those votes, Sullivan still leads by 6,211 votes. It is believed there will no more than 3,000 additional ballots to count by this Wednesday (Nov 19).

Alaska updated their 2014 election results web site about 25 minutes ago. An additional 7,100 votes were added in to the race for Senator. Begich got 55.0% of those votes, while Sullivan got 37.3%. Sullivan's lead dropped from 7,911 to 6,651 votes. At that pace, if an additional 30,000 votes are counted, Begich would close to within 1,300 votes of Sullivan and within the 0.5% margin for a recount (I assume it's 0.5% for Alaska).

Does anyone have any idea why the election results for the Alaska Senate race (and all other races in that state) haven't been updated since Tuesday night? They managed to go through a little over 20,000 ballots on Tuesday, but nothing else since. It sounds like they have anywhere from 20,000 to 35,000 more ballots to count. Did they announce they would continue the counting at a later date?

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Republican Dan Sullivan won Alaska's U.S. Senate race, defeating first-term incumbent Democrat Mark Begich. Sullivan led Begich by about 8,100 votes on Election Night last week and held a comparable edge after election workers had counted about 20,000 absentee, early-voted and questioned ballots late Tuesday. Thousands more ballots remained to be counted, but the results indicated that Begich could not overcome Sullivan's lead. The Alaska seat was initially considered key to the Republicans' hopes of taking control of the U.S. Senate, but that goal was accomplished before the Alaska race was decided. Sullivan, in a statement,...

Republican candidate Dan Sullivan defeated Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Begich in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race Wednesday. The win gives the GOP eight Senate pickups in the midterm elections. The party is also seeking a ninth seat in Louisiana’s runoff in December.

<p>Republican candidate Dan Sullivan defeated Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Begich in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race Wednesday.</p> <p>The win gives the GOP eight Senate pickups in the midterm elections. The party is also seeking a ninth seat in Louisiana’s runoff in December.</p>

JUNEAU, Alaska — Republican Dan Sullivan won Alaska's U.S. Senate race, defeating incumbent Democrat Mark Begich. Sullivan led Begich by about 8,100 votes on Election Night last week, and when state officials counted absentee and questioned ballots Tuesday, the results indicated that Begich could not overcome Sullivan's lead.

Alaska will begin counting nearly 50,000 absentee and questioned ballots on Tuesday in an effort to resolve the state's unsettled contests for the Senate and for governor. Democratic Sen. Mark Begich trails Republican challenger Dan Sullivan by about 8,100 votes. ... The Alaska governor's race is also too close to call. Independent candidate Bill Walker leads incumbent Republican Gov. Sean Parnell by about 3,000 votes.

Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich wasn't conceding anything Wednesday in his race against Republican challenger Dan Sullivan. Sullivan held a 3.6 percentage point lead over Begich with all precincts reporting. Thousands of absentee ballots won't be counted until Nov. 11. In a statement Wednesday, Begich campaign manager Susanne Fleek-Green said the campaign wants a final vote count. Republicans said they believe the margin is insurmountable.

Republicans picked up another Senate seat Wednesday.Dan Sullivan led Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, by more than 8,000 votes with 100 percent reporting, according to Associated Press data.The outcome obliterated any last hope among Democrats for a silver lining to Tuesday's Republican wave, and capped a banner Election Day for the GOP.

Republican challenger Dan Sullivan has pulled to his biggest lead yet over Democratic incumbent Mark Begich in the final Rasmussen Reports survey of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

There's a time-honored cliche that political pundits tend to trot out whenever they're asked, usually on cable TV, to prognosticate about a race they aren't particularly familiar with: "It's going to come down to the ground game." Most of the time, this isn't really true. Fundamentals such as party registration numbers and the state of the economy usually play a larger part in election outcomes than the campaigns' respective efforts to ensure that their voters actually vote. But suddenly there's reason to believe that the ground game is going to matter more in this year's Alaska Senate contest between Democratic...

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is telling her Alaska colleague, Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, that when it comes to using her likeness in his ads, “no means no.” Begich, who is up for reelection in a closely watched race against Republican Dan Sullivan, has used Murkowski’s picture in campaign ads to highlight his bipartisan bona fides and the fact both he and Murkowski are on the Appropriations Committee. Over the summer, representatives for the Republican sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Begich campaign, but he used a photo of the two of them at a joint press event as recently as...

It’s no secret that Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) is in trouble. He votes with the president too often for many Alaskans’ liking, he’s too absent in Congress, and the Democratic candidate for governor has even declined to endorse him. Politico’s Amanda Coyne, however, apparently thinks Begich’s opponent, Dan Sullivan, is more fun to criticize. Among her jabs: Sullivan’s speeches are too predictable, he has only lived in Alaska for 12 years, and he doesn’t know when to pause during speeches. For shame! Coyne saved a bit of mockery for the “Rally for the Valley” held near former Governor Sarah Palin’s...

After clinching the Republican nomination for the Alaska Senate race, Dan Sullivan has now surged six points according to a new Public Policy Polling poll. An August poll conducted prior to the primary showed Begich leading Sullivan 43 percent to 37 percent. But now Sullivan leads 43 percent while Begich has fallen two points. Begich suffered from campaign missteps earlier this month after his campaign was forced to pull a controversial negative ad. The poll surveyed 880 likely voters from September 18th to 21st - right after Begich cast the deciding vote to defeat an amendment proposed by Sen. Jeff...

The highly competitive Alaska Senate race turned vitriolic over the holiday weekend after Democratic incumbent Mark Begich's campaign released a brutal new TV ad that tied Republican challenger Dan Sullivan to circumstances surrounding a horrific Anchorage murder case. On Friday, the Begich campaign began airing the ad -- now pulled from the airwaves --which featured a retired Anchorage police officer recounting the circumstances of a 2013 crime. In that case, a man named Jerry Active stands accused of murdering an elderly couple and sexually assaulting their 2-year-old granddaughter and the girl’s 91-year-old great-grandmother. Active had been previously convicted of the...

When it comes to the general election, Mark Begich continues to have modest leads over all of his potential Republican opponents. In the most likely match up with Sullivan he gets 43% to Sullivan's 37% with a bevy of third party candidates combining to get 7%. When you take them out of the mix Begich's lead is 45/41. Begich has held a lead in the 4-7 point range over Sullivan in all four of PPP's polls of this race over the last year. The numbers for Begich against Treadwell are pretty similar. He has a 42/37 lead when the entire...