Alaska Senate Race Update

With all Alaska precincts reporting, Republican incumbent Ted Stevens continues to lead Anchorage's Democratic Mayor Mark Begich by 3,257 votes out of 221,713. That would certainly be enough to call the race for convicted-felon Stevens if there were not still well over 80,000 ballots being counted to finalize the tally.

As of Friday, the Alaska Division of Elections reported that they had 81,224 uncounted ballots on hand. Absentee ballots mailed from U.S. locations on or before November 4th can continue to arrive until Friday, with ballots from overseas and military bases having until November 19th to be counted.

The final count of absentee and questioned ballots is scheduled for November 19th, with certification of the election on November 25th.

A lot of the outstanding ballots are early votes and Begich is hoping that many of those will be from enthusiastic Barack Obama supporters and that they will generally trend Democratic. There are currently almost 10,000 early votes still to be counted.

Meanwhile, the Alaska Democratic Party believes the amount of votes remaining to be counted in areas Begich won on Tuesday bodes well for the Democrat.

Stay tuned…