Update #4: Here's why you shouldn't be too worried about Murkowski outperforming her election day performance among absentee ballots in the Mat-Su Valley: there were actually more absentees coming from the Mat-Su Valley than there were from nine house districts in Anchorage. So Miller can afford an underperformance among the absentees in one his strongholds because it appears that much of the absentee vote is coming from his election day strongholds.
Here’s a better explanation of her success in Mat-Su IMHO:
http://www.swingstateproject.com/diary/7493/aksen-the-latest-count
“5:19pm: From Shira Toeplitz:
There will be 1,273 fewer ballots processed today than planned. Election officials announced that a set of questioned ballots from four state House districts in the Mat-Su Valley area will be opened Friday instead of Tuesday. ...During last Tuesday’s primary, the ballots in these four state House districts voted for Miller over Murkowski, 62 percent to 38 percent.”
That’s a lot of “questioned ballots “.
I believe there are about 10,000 “questioned ballots “ in total now!
49,888
48,594
Miller by 1,354