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Quick thread on Alaska& #39;s U.S. Senate race, since people have been asking about it this morning.
Dem-endorsed independent Al Gross, who& #39;s trailing by nearly 60,000 votes put out a memo this morning saying: We still think we& #39;re going to win. Here it is #AKleg #AKsen #AKelect (1/x)
Dem-endorsed independent Al Gross, who& #39;s trailing by nearly 60,000 votes put out a memo this morning saying: We still think we& #39;re going to win. Here it is #AKleg #AKsen #AKelect (1/x)
Their argument, summarized, is: Only about 200,000 votes have been counted so far, and as many as 150,000 absentee/early/questioned ballots won& #39;t be counted until starting next week (more on that delay in a separate story).
Gross: "A question mark on this race should remain"
Gross: "A question mark on this race should remain"
The campaign of Gross& #39; opponent, incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, sees the math very differently -- as do a number of Dems/progressives I& #39;ve spoken to.
Gross trails by about 60,000 votes. In theory, he needs to win @ least 70% of the uncounted votes to pull even.
Gross trails by about 60,000 votes. In theory, he needs to win @ least 70% of the uncounted votes to pull even.
That seems like a steep hill to climb, but the path gets even tougher when you consider that of the absentee ballots received by the state (more than 115,000 of the total), about 1/4 were requested by Democratic voters and 1/4 were requested by Republicans. (breakdown in photo)
If you assume, reasonably, that D& #39;s voted for Gross and R& #39;s for Sullivan, and you also assume that the remaining uncounted early and questioned ballots track similarly with the absentees& #39; party affiliation, those D and R ballots cancel each other out+Gross doesn& #39;t make progress.
That leaves a universe of some 60,000-75,000 absentee/early/questioned ballots from independent voters that are in play. Given Gross& #39; nearly 60,000-vote deficit, he& #39;s have to win almost literally all of those votes, or 80% if it& #39;s 75k outstanding votes, to pull even #AKsen #AKleg
I& #39;m not a data analyst; this is all very preliminary and broad strokes, but it also makes intuitive sense. We& #39;ve asked Gross& #39; campaign to rebut this analysis w details, but what they& #39;ve said so far is simply that their analysis is different and pointed to the # of uncounted votes
