Campaign Diaries

You can blame Alaskan election officials for their dreadfully slow counting pace, but you can’t fault them for not spending that time preparing ridiculously detailed lists of which ballots we should expect to be tallied at what time. Their latest release, which came out late last night, provided a counting timeline by region, informing us that about 14,000 of the remaining votes would be tallied today.

And when the Alaska’s Division of Election finally updated their totals this evening, it was once again Mark Begich who gained the most, extending his lead from 814 to 1022 votes (or 0.35%).

There are still more than 25,000 ballots to be counted, and the state will get through them on Monday and Tuesday. On paper, that is more than enough for Stevens to reverse the tide but the situation is now looking more precarious for the incumbent Senator: If the state’s counting timeline was respected, it means that all outstanding votes from the conservative stronghold Mat-Su valley (which includes Sarah Palin’s Wasilla) were processed today, so that there are no more ballots to be counted in the region that would be most likely to fuel a Stevens comeback.

On the other hand, the state’s most pro-Begich area (the so-called “Region IV,” based in Nome) also finished reporting today - meaning that the Democrat’s biggest reservoir of votes has also exhausted its resources. However, Begich is in the lead and it is up to Stevens to now close that gap. That a third of the day’s votes came from the GOP’s strongest area does not bode well for Stevens.

Still to be counted - based on the timeline listed above coupled with this results map - are:

• Thousands of absentee ballots from Juneau: This is an area in which Begich did very well, especially in the two districts in which almost half of the remaining votes are located (the 2nd and the 5th), both of which went for Begich by double digits.

• Thousands of absentee ballots from Fairbanks: This is an area in which the candidates were about tied, making it unlikely that that the remaining ballots will break decisively in one direction or another (the 8th district went for Begich big, the 11th and 12th for Stevens big - but they should balance each other).

• About 15,000 ballots (both early and questioned) from Anchorage and its suburbs. Both candidates have good results in various areas of this region, and the ballots appear to be fairly evenly divided, making it difficult to predict how these ballots will break - but the one thing that we know is that Stevens will have to perform very well here if he is to close the gap.

Meanwhile, the situation is somewhat more confused in CA-04, where new tallies continue to pour in daily without our having a clear sense of where the numbers are coming from nor how many ballots remain to be counted. As of last night, Republican nominee Tom McClintock led by more than 1,200 votes - but the margin was cut to 533 this morning. It has now risen up to 691.

The reason for this roller coaster is that the margin is tightening dramatically every time Democratic-friendly Nevada County is releasing new tallies - while McClintock is gaining when El Dorado County (where he leads narrowly) counts more votes. These two counties still have tens thousands of uncounted ballots, but the biggest contingent of remaining ballots will come from Placer County, which has not released any new tally since November 5th - meaning there are tens of thousands of absentee and early votes remaining to be counted there. McClintock won 50.8% of the vote of that county so far, but it is impossible to predict how this race will end until we get a better idea of how Placer’s absentees are breaking.