Primary Election Day-Florida, Arizona & Alaska

[David]

And the most suspenseful race is in Alaska. Moderate Lisa Murkowski facing stiff contest with tea party favorite and Sarah Palin favorite Joe Miller. Those returns may have to wait until tomorrow.

I will be anxious to see what kind of turnout they have in Florida. Suspense is gone. Kendrick Meek should win easily over billionaire Jeff Green. What will be interesting is seeing turnout in minority community.

[annett]

As for the Arizona race, the voters chose McCain over J.D. Hayworth. I was really surprised as I was under the assumption that Arizona voters were more than fed up with McCain's flip flopping on issues. He must have done a great job in reassuring Conservative voters that he was their ticket. I think they were duped. He will continue to vote against the will of Arizonans.

[Rifleman]

JD Was not without probelms, I think that was the kicker.

[David]

J.D. Hayworth's time in the house was not without contradictions. He was big on earmarks. Hard to score with tea party voters and participate in infomercials telling people they could get government loans they wouldn't have to pay back. Mathew Lesko? Bad candidate. McCain's ads were brutally effective.

[David]

Trying to get the latest from the Alaska GOP Senate race. Looks like Murkowski is in front, but still early. Sarah Palin endorsed Joe Miller. However, the Murkowski name is huge in Alaska. She's not too bad. Not a RINO on the level of Snowe and Collins. On the other hand, Alaska much more conservative than Maine.

Check that. Miller has taken a very slim lead. This is great news. Only 59% of the vote in. This may take awhile.
51-49 Miller at the moment.

[schaabdl]

FL: Great GOP numbers looking at both of the statewide in particular but even on the Senate GOP side, 1.2M votes cast in a non-race for Rubio to less than 900K on the DIM side where there was a "race"
AZ: JD was not the candidate to beat McCain - replacing baggage with baggage was never the answer. I know that my vote would have gone to JD but in the end, he could not defeat the incumbent who simply has done well for the state.
AK: 84% and Miller still with 2 points. This is somewhat surprising - I can't even find any polling numbers for Alaska under RCP. I heard earlier that Miller was down by at least 8-10 points heading into the final week. From the Anchorage paper:

The final results of the race won't be known for over a week. The Alaska Division of Elections said over 16,000 absentee ballots were requested and as of Monday night 7,600 had been returned. The first count of absentees will be next Tuesday and there will be two subsequent counts as the absentee votes trickle in on Sept. 3 and on Sept. 8

Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/08/24/142342...#ixzz0xc5mJQk7

With the difference less than 3000, then the result truly may not be know until 8 September unless sooner conceded.

[David]

More on the turnout and what it means for Nov. Hint-Even the NY Times is worried.

Behind the Florida Primary Surprises, Turnout Tells a Tale
By DAMIEN CAVE

MIAMI — Beyond the win-loss results of Tuesday’s Florida primary — with Rick Scott seizing the Republican mantle for governor, and Kendrick Meek winning the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate — there lie more subtle signals of what to look for in November.

Turnout tells one potential story: Republicans, despite a 750,000-voter disadvantage in registration compared to Democrats, brought far more people to the polls.

In all, 1.25 million Republicans cast ballots in the Republican Governor’s race, while fewer than 909,000 Democrats voted in the Democratic Senate primary — even though both races were heated and close in the final weeks. Marco Rubio alone, in beating two unknown challengers for the Republican nomination to the Senate, collected more votes than all the Democrats on the other side combined, suggesting that the party of Obama — without Obama on the ticket — faces an uphill battle when it comes to motivation.

“It’s formidable, it’s very formidable on the right of the Republican party,” said Daniel Smith, director of the political campaigning program at the University of Florida.

The Republicans in Florida now have candidates who appeal to an angry, frustrated electorate in a swing state that is still bouncing along the bottom economically. Both Mr. Rubio and Mr. Scott can cast themselves as outsiders; both have focused their campaigns on fiscal issues and jobs; both have name recognition that their opponents crave.

Democrats, on the other hand, face a complicated set of circumstances. Mr. Meek, a congressman from Miami, and Alex Sink, the Democratic nominee for governor, are already a part of government, which in a year of anti-incumbency makes them vulnerable to attack as “career politicians.”

Their paths to potential victory in November also differ. Mr. Meek is in a competitive three-way race with Mr. Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist, who abandoned the Republican party in April and who is now hoping to siphon off the votes of moderate Democrats. If the race stays close, the Senate seat could be won with just over one-third of the total vote. But in her two-way race for governor, Ms. Sink needs to appeal to a wider swatch of the electorate.

So when President Barack Obama visited in the final days of the campaign to raise money for the party, Mr. Meek eagerly joined with him, while Ms. Sink publicly ignored the visit and avoided being in any photos that might link her visually with the president.

Steven Schale, a Democratic strategist who managed the Obama campaign two years ago, said Ms. Sink now faces a classic Florida fight, where independents and moderates in the I-4 corridor between Orlando and Tampa are likely to play a deciding role. But while he acknowledges that Democratic turnout was low for the primary, he said that the party’s registration advantage was still likely to make up for the increased enthusiasm among Republicans.

“They have to wipe out a 7-point advantage to get to parity,” he said. “Even if they wipe out 5 percent, Democrats still have a 2-point advantage. It’s still the quintessential Florida model — it comes down to swing Democrats and independents.”

He said that Democrats had two other reasons for optimism: Mr. Scott’s past as the chief executive of a hospital chain that paid large fines for defrauding the federal government will continue to be a major issue, he said, and the once powerful and unified Florida Republican party is now bitterly divided.

Spending scandals have tarnished many Republican leaders in the state, and Rick Scott’s surprising victory will inevitably lead to quite a few awkward conversations. He was scathing even in his victory speech on Tuesday — “In Tallahassee tonight, the deal makers are crying in their cocktails,” he said — while a downtrodden cast of lobbyists, lawmakers and party officials tried to discern how their favored candidate, Bill McCollum, lost despite their money and support.

The results, Mr. Schale said, also include a few hidden surprises. “Alex Sink got 70,000 more votes than Rick Scott last night,” he said. “Scott also lost critical I-4 counties like Hillsborough, Orange and Pinellas counties. These are counties you have to win in a general to win Florida.”

Mr. Smith added that Mr. Meek may also help bring out loyal African-American Democrats, helping Ms. Sink and other Democrats down the ballot.

And yet, Tuesday’s surprising results place the most pressing questions mainly on the Republican side of the ledger: Can Mr. Scott and Mr. Rubio sustain the faithful’s enthusiasm? Will they move to the center, and will it help?

Mr. Rubio has already begun to veer from the Tea Party outsider script, but Mr. Scott won with overwhelming support from conservatives in North Florida who welcomed his demand for tougher policies against illegal immigrants. His loss in heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade County was so great that it nearly kept Mr. McCollum from conceding defeat, because he thought it might tip the close statewide race in his favor.

The economy will probably be the top issue for voters in November, according to analysts and strategists. But with both parties seeking to increase turnout, could immigration — one of the first issues Mr. Scott embraced, and one that has tied Mr. Rubio in knots — be the spark that sets off a race to the polls?

SOURCE

[schaabdl]

Murkowski - Yet Another Sore Loser!
All precincts counted - Miller with a 1668 vote edge. None of the absentee ballots counted (will start counting on 31st). However, using the 7600 already received and the difference in margin, Murkowski would need to poll 61% of the absentee votes to move ahead.

[David]

It's over in Alaska. Murkowski has conceded. Another stout conservative replaces a moderate Republican.

[schaabdl]

From 30 points down to a win - yes, some RINOS will remain but they too will be on the endangered species list.