First…..look at how Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) regards the counting of every vote….
A Ramsey County judge on Saturday denied a bid by lawyers representing U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign to delay the opening of 32 absentee ballots from Minneapolis. Link
Coleman has a 221 vote lead over Al Franken, with a statewide recount scheduled soon.
Convicted felon Ted Stevens (R-AK), currently leading in his senate seat race, may not actually win in the end…..
Although Ted Stevens currently holds a lead of approximately 3,200 votes in ballots counted to date in Alaska's senate contest, there is good reason to believe that the ballots yet to be counted — the vast majority of which are early and absentee ballots — will allow Mark Begich to mitigate his disadvantage with Stevens and quite possibly pull ahead of him. Link
Rachel Maddow had a piece Friday on the problems with the Alaskan vote count. Something isn't quite right up in Sarah Palin's home state…..
"The emerging conventional wisdom is that there was some sort of a Bradley Effect in this contest — voters told pollsters that they weren't about to vote for that rascal Ted Stevens, when in fact they were perfectly happy to. Convicted felons are the new black, it would seem. The problem with this theory is that the polling failures in Alaska weren't unique to Stevens."
The polls also consistently showed Rep. Young as losing by at least 6%, but he is currently ahead in the vote count by 8%. Even in the presidential race, where polls showed McCain leading by 14% or less, the vote count has him winning by 61% to 35% — precisely the same margin as George Bush in 2004. That represents a polling error of at least 11% to 14% in all three races.
At the same time, total voter turnout appears to be about 11% lower in Alaska this year than in 2004 — despite over 20,000 new registrations, heavy turnout in the primaries, record early voting, long lines at the polls on Election Day, and the state's own governor being on the ballot, all of which had led to an expectation of record participation. Link
It's that last paragraph that bothers me. The Governor of the state of Alaska was on the GOP presidential ticket and the turnout in Alaska was 11% lower than in 2004?? That is pretty hard to swallow. 20,000 new registrations and record early voting…..but 11% less overall turnout than 4 years ago??
Pre-election day polling everywhere was extremely accurate this election cycle……but Alaska had a wide swing away from the pre-election polling data???
Something stinks up there in Caribou Barbie country.
