Seems obvious that the absentee ballots would most likely have been cast early. Being early, Murkowski wouldn’t have yet made her last-ditch run. Therefore, I’d be surprised if Murkowski were on more than a handfull of absentee ballots.
Alaska is a traditional republican state and soldiers, in particular, tend to be conservative voters.
Since Murkowski now has zero votes at all and Miller has over 67000, then Murkowski has to get 67,500 of the write-in votes just to catch up with Miller.
But, what if Miller gets 55% of the 31000 absentee ballots and Murkowski gets none since she wasn’t on the absentee ballot? 55% is 17050 votes. Add that to Miller’s 67500 and Miller has 84550 to Murkowski’s nothing.
Can Murkowski get 84,550 votes? Uhhhh....NOOO!
There are only 81000 write in votes. If she got every single write-in vote, and there are only 81000 of them, she can never get 84,550 votes. It is impossible.
Just because Murkowski wasn’t on the absentee ballot doesn’t mean that she won’t get any absentee votes—one can vote for write-ins with absentee ballots just as with regular ballots.
I think that there are valid reasons to be hopeful that Miller will get far more absentee votes than Murkowski will, but to assume that she will get close to 0 absentee votes when write-ins were 41% of all ballots cast on election day (and by all accounts the overwhelming majority of absentees were cast by Murkowski voters, although not all will be valid votes) defies logic.