Nate Silver: What In The Hell Happened in Alaska?

[BzaDem]

--snip--

Although Ted Stevens holds a small lead in Alaska and is the favorite to retain his seat, the outcome is not as inevitable as it might appear to be. Stevens currently holds a lead of 3,353 votes, or about 1.5 percent of the votes tallied so far. But, there are quite a large number of ballots yet to count. According to Roll Call, these include "at least 40,000 absentee ballot, 9,000 early voting ballots, and an undetermined number of questionable ballots".

Indeed, it seems possible that the number of "questionable" ballots could be quite high. So far, about 220 thousand votes have been processed in Alaska. This compares with 313 thousand votes cast in 2004. After adding back in the roughly 50,000 absentee and early ballots that Roll Call accounts for, that would get us to 270 thousand ballots, or about a 14 percent drop from 2004. It seems unlikely that turnout would drop by 14 percent in Alaska given the presence of both a high-profile senate race and Sarah Palin at the top of the ticket.

But even if Begich were to make up ground and win a narrow victory, this would seem to represent a catastrophic failure of polling, as three polls conducted following the guilty verdict in Stevens' corruption trial had Begich leading by margins of 7, 8 and 22 points, respectively.

--snip--

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/what-in-hell-happened-in-alaska.html

[d_b]

1. this says it all

So far, about 220 thousand votes have been processed in Alaska. This compares with 313 thousand votes cast in 2004. After adding back in the roughly 50,000 absentee and early ballots that Roll Call accounts for, that would get us to 270 thousand ballots, or about a 14 percent drop from 2004. It seems unlikely that turnout would drop by 14 percent in Alaska given the presence of both a high-profile senate race and Sarah Palin at the top of the ticket.


Come on back, FBI.

[book_worm]

2. Given that the GOP controls all in Alaska and Stevens power network I'm thinking votes were purged

democratic votes.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

3. Missing votes = GOP malfeasance

I like Nate's site, but he was way to quick to blame bad exit polling for discrepancies on election night.

Same here, I'd look at the voting process before blaming the pollsters.

[CK_John]

4. Palin happened and the light of exposure acts like UV to bacteria. n/t