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Finally. An additional 7,286 votes were added to the Alaska Senate totals today so far. And while Begich received almost 58% of those votes, Sullivan still leads by 6,211 votes. It is believed there will no more than 3,000 additional ballots to count by this Wednesday (Nov 19).

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell conceded the gubernatorial race Saturday, issuing a statement a day after independent challenger Bill Walker was declared the winner. […] Parnell has served as governor since July 2009, when Sarah Palin resigned. He won election in his own right in 2010. Palin had endorsed Walker. …

Republican Dan Sullivan is expected to defeat Democratic Sen. Mark Begich in the final vote count in the Alaska Senate race, according to an analysis by a reporter for Alaska Public Radio Network. Reporter Alexandra Gutierrez’s analysis arrived at the same conclusion as an analysis conducted by Alaska News-Miner. Begich would reportedly need to win more than 56 percent of the uncounted votes to overtake Sullivan. Sullivan led Begich by 8,149 votes after Election Day last week, but Begich refused to concede. The Democrat is waiting on more than 21,000 uncounted absentee ballots, allegedly from rural areas where the mail...

<p>Update (11-11-14): According to the Alaska Division of Elections Sullivan has picked up approximately 5,300 votes to 4,650 for the BigItch thus far.</p> <p>That’s 10,000 previously uncounted ballots, and the Sullivan gain has extended slightly. Dems were hoping for ridiculously lopsided BigItch votes for a comeback. So far so good. I thought you may want to refresh this thread in breaking since we have hard numbers to update.</p>

After clinching the Republican nomination for the Alaska Senate race, Dan Sullivan has now surged six points according to a new Public Policy Polling poll. An August poll conducted prior to the primary showed Begich leading Sullivan 43 percent to 37 percent. But now Sullivan leads 43 percent while Begich has fallen two points. Begich suffered from campaign missteps earlier this month after his campaign was forced to pull a controversial negative ad. The poll surveyed 880 likely voters from September 18th to 21st - right after Begich cast the deciding vote to defeat an amendment proposed by Sen. Jeff...

Labor Day week ought to start clarifying the partisan battle to control the Senate, but if anything, the picture just got muddier and the map bigger. An afterthought all year, conservative Kansas is suddenly abuzz. An independent candidate drove the Democrat from the race and positioned himself to consolidate discontent with three-term Republican Sen. Pat Roberts. Washington-based GOP strategists are rushing to help Roberts, who's accused of sleepwalking through the race in the deeply Republican state. If Kansas brought welcome news to Democrats, Alaska did not. First-term Sen. Mark Begich initially was seen as running a smart campaign with excellent...

When it comes to the general election, Mark Begich continues to have modest leads over all of his potential Republican opponents. In the most likely match up with Sullivan he gets 43% to Sullivan's 37% with a bevy of third party candidates combining to get 7%. When you take them out of the mix Begich's lead is 45/41. Begich has held a lead in the 4-7 point range over Sullivan in all four of PPP's polls of this race over the last year. The numbers for Begich against Treadwell are pretty similar. He has a 42/37 lead when the entire...

Power Players He once worked for Sarah Palin and has been dubbed a “protégé” of Condoleezza Rice. Now Dan Sullivan is fighting to become a high-profile conservative brand name of his own, trying to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska in one of the most closely watched political races of the year. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin appointed Sullivan attorney general in 2009. Before that he worked within President George W. Bush’s inner circle as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Now, Sullivan has the task of convincing GOP primary voters that he is Alaskan enough,...

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, might not want her Democratic colleague, Mark Begich, to win re-election in 2014, but her habit of breaking with the GOP on several key votes could give him some political cover ahead of 2014. “As an Alaska delegation, we’ve got to be working on those issues that are important to our constituents,” Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News this week. “Sen. Begich has been keying in on the issues that I think Alaskans are worried about and doing what he was tasked to do.” “I’m going to be working to get Republicans elected,” she later added....

Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) is drawing praise from across the aisle from one of Alaska's top Republicans. Rep. Don Young (R), the state's lone congressman, praised the work Begich has done as senator. "Mark's done a great job of, very frankly, representing people. He's not always on my page, that's for sure, but he's done a good job," Young told The Hill on Wednesday. Young, the longest-serving House Republican, said he expected Begich to face a tough race, however, due to some of his votes for Democratic priorities. "His big challenge is some of the votes he made are not...

The Republican National Committee began running ads in 40 media markets Tuesday mostly targeting incumbent senators who supported President Barack Obama’s health care program. Billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, meanwhile, gave $2.5 million to help Democrats defend their majority in the Senate. The early action suggests Republicans see the president’s signature domestic achievement as their way to keep control of the House and perhaps win the Senate. With more than 300 days remaining before Election Day, both sides are looking to set the agenda before voters start paying attention. “Obamacare is going to be the issue in 2014,”...

Gotta figure her lead would be even bigger without Joe Miller in the field here. Her nomination for the taking? Alaska should be a top tier pick up opportunity for Senate Republicans next year…but their top choice of a candidate is Sarah Palin. 36% of GOP primary voters in the state say they’d like Palin to be their standard bearer against Mark Begich to 26% for Mead Treadwell, 15% for Dan Sullivan, and 12% for Joe Miller. Palin leads mostly based on her strength with ‘very conservative’ voters where she gets 43% to 20% for Treadwell, but she also leads...

Sarah Palin underexposed? It’s hard to imagine. But in Alaska, where she is considering a Senate run, she might be. The former governor “has no profile in Alaska. She’s not active,” says a Republican consultant familiar with Alaska politics. “She’s doing her own thing personally. She’s not giving speeches and doing Republican-women events and fundraisers and helping people. She’s just very much under the radar.” That kind of invisibility may have prompted her potential opponent, Democrat Mark Begich, to snarkily remark to Politico yesterday, “I don’t know if she’s a resident. She’s been away from Alaska a lot.” According to...

If you are a Conservative, you may have gotten a few e-mails from a Washington, D.C. based group called the Tea Party Leadership Fund. These letters will be signed by a man named Todd Cefaratti. The letter states they are looking to “Draft Sarah Palin” into making a run at Alaska’s Senate seat in 2014, a seat now held by democrat Mark Begich. This of course has caused quite a stir, and unfortunately many have sent their hard earned money to this crew. Recently, the group commissioned a poll of Alaskans, looking to legitimize their efforts. Harper Polling found these...

A new Harper Polling poll shows a plurality of likely Alaskan Republican voters support their former Governor, Sarah Palin, as a U.S. Senate candidate in the 2014 GOP primary over Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and 2010 Senate candidate Joe Miller. The survey of 379 likely Republican voters found that 32 percent support Palin, whereas 30 percent support Treadwell and 14 percent support Miller. The Harper Polling poll, conducted via telephone on May 6 and May 7 on behalf of the Tea Party Leadership Fund, found that 45 percent of likely GOP voters think Palin would “fight hardest for conservative values,”...

A group organized as The Tea Party Leadership Fund is trying to draft former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to run for the U.S. Senate in 2014. The fund claims that the former Fox News analyst would be favored to unseat incumbent Mark Begich (D-AK), whose polling numbers have suffered recently. But the organization has not even discussed its effort with Gov. Palin, and she has never expressed any real desire to be a U.S. Senator. The fund's Niger Innis says the interest of Tea Party members in a Palin run, however, is clear. "We...

"Do the words 'Senator Sarah Palin' excite you?" That's the opening line of a recent email by The Tea Party Leadership Fund, which is trying to draft the former Alaska governor and past Fox News commentator to run for the Senate in 2014. The fund argues Palin has a clear path to victory in part due to recent polling showing incumbent Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, with less than 50 percent of the vote. But, it being a draft, the group hasn't talked with Palin about whether or not she's interested. And Palin – whose PAC didn't respond to request...