Updated: Within the past few hours, the GOP has won more than enough to take the Senate. So although we don’t know who’s going to win in Alaska, one thing is for sure is that Sen. Lisa Murkowski will be chair of the Energy Committee.

Voting Issues

Georgia’s Voter website that is used to verify registration status, has crashed causing Civil Rights groups to become very vocal about this potential lawsuit.

Florida gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist’s campaign has filed an emergency motion with the circuit court to extend voting by 2 hours in Broward County due to several problems at polls across the county. Ugh Florida, you never cease to antagonize me.

Here’s what we know as of 9:14 p.m. AK time. I’ll be updated throughout the night. Continue reading →

Anything can happen, but the things appear to be looking good for GOP Senate candidate Dan Sullivan according to a Republican Party source. The big worry was Sen. Mark Begich’s vaunted ground game, particularly in rural Alaska, which, among other things, involves getting voters to the polls early. However, when they crunched the numbers, they found rural Alaska was actually under-performing by about 3 percent compared to the rest of the state when it came to early and absentee voting.

I was going to resist the Stubbs meme until I saw this:

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Outside my voting precinct. #AKelect #Alaska pic.twitter.com/tsPQKLuo1V

— Devin Kelly (@devckelly) November 4, 2014

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This is a little old, but I think still valuable information: As of Sunday, there were about 45,000 early and absentee votes counted. Partisan breakdown: R-32%. D-18%. Non-Partisan and Undeclared 46%.

Mark Begich is here for lunch at the Lucky Wishbone. #AKsen pic.twitter.com/XUPXwKdeUX — Nat Herz (@Nat_Herz) November 4, 2014

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You know who we need to hear more from? Sarah Palin, of course.  Here she is, urging us to vote for Walker/Mallott:

Begich was at the Atwood state office building greeting workers as they were coming to work this morning. Smart.

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• Team Begich has knocked on 50k doors last week alone (about 1/6 of expected turnout), but that didn’t stop Dan Sullivan from telling a Washington Post reporter, “Who knows? Maybe their big game on their ground game is really impressive or maybe it’s kind of like his record of getting bills passed,” Sullivan said in an interview. “I dunno, we’ll see on November 4.”

• Election predictions are a time honored tradition and fun to read and relive the incorrect forecasts. I did pretty well for the primary and maybe I’ll do as well in my general election predictions. Or maybe I won’t. (The governor’s race gave me particular heartburn.) Either way, the AlaskaCommons has information regarding Alaska Election Day facts and the Dispatch has a refresher on all the items that will be on every Alaskan’s ballot.

• Speaking of which, there are lots of places to find a viewer’s guide to election night. ABC News, Politico and The Hill have their own versions of what to expect on a national overview. The Hill also has a downloadable Senate Scorecard.

• Alexandra Gutierrez with APRN has the results of her interview with a top Gov. Sean Parnell aide regarding the Alaska National Guard scandal and response timeline.

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Good morning from Anchorage! Election Day has arrived in the Last Frontier #wpteamamerica #aksen pic.twitter.com/CMqwdP44ry

— Sebastian Payne (@SebastianEPayne) November 4, 2014

Polls opened at 7 a.m. At 8 a.m. Bill Walker and a team of sign wavers were at the corner of Minnesota and Northern Lights in Anchorage. GOP senate candidate Dan Sullivan was spotted waving signs at the corner of Northern Lights and the Seward Highway. Continue reading →

The phones are almost done ringing, you won’t need a forklift to carry your mail from the mailbox to your house. Soon the political attack ads on radio and TV will be gone. It’s time to vote.

After months and months, which at times seemed like decades if not centuries, of following the campaigns, here’s my predictions–not what I wish would happen, but what I think will happen– for what they’re worth:

U.S. Senate – Alaska has never seen a race like this, and it’ll likely be a long time, if ever, until we see a repeat. More than $60 million has been spent, not a small amount of which has been paid to try to figure out who is going to win. And, still, nobody can say for sure. But I see the momentum and wind behind Dan Sullivan’s back. Prediction: Dan Sullivan will win.

U.S. House of Representatives – It seems that incumbent Rep. Don Young has tried to do as
much as possible to make this race close. His gaffes, insensitive remarks and behavior would doom any other politician almost anywhere. But there was a bigger mistake made: The Democratic Party and the DCCC didn’t invest in Democratic challenger Forrest Dunbar’s candidacy. Had they done so, this would be a very close race. Prediction: Don Young will win, but he won’t and shouldn’t enjoy the margins of past victories.

Governor – This is the toughest one of the race, so I’m going to hedge. Continue reading →

The natural gas pipeline is one of the most important issues facing Alaska. You might not know it, because Gov. Sean Parnell and his people seem to want to keep most things to themselves, but Parnell oversaw a huge advancement in the gas line. Nothing’s for sure, but never before in the history of the state have all interests converged. Independent candidate Bill Walker has made building the line a hallmark of his campaign. Yet what’s happening now and what Walker’s plans are for the line, if he were elected, is one of the most under-reported stories of the campaign. As of now, the state and Trans-Canada have partnered to have a 25 percent interest in the line. Walker says that he wants the state to own at least 51 percent. What that really means is anybody’s guess. How much more will that cost? Where is the money going to come from? The contract that the state is working from now will certainly have to be re-written and re-negotiated, and passed through the Legislature. How long will that take? To what end? Given Parnell’s bungles, does the public even care? I haven’t had the time and the manpower to dig into too much of this since Walker announced, but I gave it a shot in a column on Sunday. And I got lots of responses, most of which I think deserve a wider audience.

Below are excerpts from a few of responses, some lightly edited:

Faithful reader “Jon K” responds to another comment about the $65 billion price-tag being over-inflated and about whether or not the producers are actually serious about building a line:   Continue reading →

Here’s a snippet from a flyer that’s been hanging on doors in West Anchorage for House candidate Republican Anand Dubey, who’s running against Democrat Matt Claman for the seat being vacated by Rep. Lindsey Holmes. Mia Costello. The flyer is written by Dubey’s wife Shivani. ( Full disclosure, Shivani is a very nice woman and helped me get this website up and running):

The flyer would appear to contradict what Dubey told Alaska Family Action in August:  Continue reading →

So many, including me, are all wondering how to read the current slate of polls. Is Gov. Sean Parnell down by 7 or by 1. Is Sen. Mark Begich down by 1 or by 5?  And what the heck is going on with Rep. Don Young? Nothing’s for sure, but do keep in mind that Alaska is a hard place to poll, and that, historically, Alaska polls have shown a Democratic bias. Here’s a chart that Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight put together a few weeks ago, illustrating that according to his model, the polls have averaged a 7 point Democratic bias in every single race since 2000:

Here’s both Gov. Sean Parnell’s and Bill Walker’s closing TV ads. What do you all think?