Tag Archives: Nick Begich

Remaining Races and Recounts

Votes are still being counted, particularly out west where mail-in ballots are the predominate form of voting.  But we are down to a handful of races that are still too close to call.

There are three things to consider at this point.  The first is how many ballots remain to be processed and where those ballots are.  The second is that Alaska uses ranked-choice voting.  While the U.S. does not have much experience with ranked-choice voting, Australia does.  The Australian experience has taught us is that second and third choices tend to be for the candidate closest to the first choice but there will be some drop off and a minority will go to the “non-similar” candidate.  As such, it is hard for a trailing candidate to close the gap much, and the trailing candidate usually wins only if the original margin is small, there are a significant number of votes for the “also-ran” candidates.  Third, the vote counting machines are very accurate.  There will be some voter errors that are only caught by visual inspection, but recounts rarely change the final count by much.  Closing a 1,000 vote margin in a recount is almost impossible.

Turning to what is still outstanding, depending on the media site that you use, the only outstanding Senate race is Pennsylvania.  The real issue in Pennsylvania is provisional ballots.  The current margin is 18,000.  Senator Bob Casey is receiving about 60% of the vote from provisional ballots so far, and most of the remaining provisional ballots are in areas that favor Senator Casey.  There will be a recount, but, as noted above, it is unlikely that the recount will change the vote total by more than 1,000.  Senator Casey’s chances depend entirely on how many additional provisional ballots are counted. Continue Reading...

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August 20 Primaries — Alaska, Florida, and Wyoming

As we conclude the August primaries (there are runoffs next week in Oklahoma, but nothing above the state legislative level), the main focus will be on Florida.  Yes there are primaries in Alaska and Wyoming, but they will have little impact on November.

In Alaska, the only statewide or Congressional primary is for the one house seat.  However, Alaska uses  a top four primary.  Barring a major upset, the top three are all but set.  Democratic Representative Mary Peltola might lose in November, but she will get well beyond the 20% needed to be assured of a spot in the top four.  The top two Republicans are two-time third-placed candidate Nick Begich and Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom.  It is possible that whomever of these two gets fewer votes might only end up in the mid to high teens.  If there were five strong candidates, that might be fatal to making the top four.  But there aren’t five strong candidates and a number in the mid-teens will probably be good enough for a top four finish.  Beyond those three, nobody has raised significant funds.  Somebody will do good enough to finish four and make the general, and that somebody might get some funds to run a general election campaign.  But that candidate is unlikely to get enough votes in November to avoid being the first candidate out in ranked-choice voting.

In Wyoming, there will be primaries on the Republican side for both the Senate and the House.  One of the two challengers in the Senate has raised a significant amount of money, but there is no indication that there is significant grassroots opposition to either incumbent.  My expectation is that both incumbents will have comfortable wins on Tuesday. Continue Reading...

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