Update, 2:40 p.m.:
There is a lot of anticipation at the Division of Elections for the next round of numbers to come in. Those votes will be from Southeast Alaska (where the Murkowski campaign hopes to get a big boost) and from the Kenai Peninsula. There are a lot of absentee votes in those areas to be counted today (roughly 2,000 from Southeast and 2,300 or so from the Kenai.)
There are also 1,013 questioned ballots supposed to be counted today from Southeast and 502 from the Kenai Peninsula.
Murkowski needs to do well in the Juneau-Kenai results (which are reported together.) Thats because the next and final round of results today will come from the Fairbanks area, a Joe Miller stronghold.
There are 1,768 absentees and 996 questioned ballots supposed to be counted today from the Fairbanks area.
All these numbers of ballots to be counted are somewhat of a moving target. The Division of Elections can delay the count of ballots that it plans to do today until later days.
The Division of Elections said by the end of the day it will have counted about 16,000 votes.
There are another 9,000 or so to be processed for subsequent counts on Friday and Sept. 8. But those numbers will change as new absentees come in and some ballots are disqualified. Also, not all ballots are for the Republican primary. Some will be for the Democratic primary.
Murkowski should do well in the Juneau count, Miller in the Fairbanks count.
There may be about 6K out in Juneau, but a good number will be cast in the Democratic primary, instead. It’s probably 3-4K votes we’re talking about at the end of the day out of there.
Partial results in with Murkowski picking up 2 (TWO) votes on Miller. LOL