How Sarah Palin Could Decide Alaska’s Race for Senate
A long article but a very good background review of the past and future Senatorial elections in Alaska. Popcorn is going to very hard to find this election season in Alaska.
by Donald Craig Mitchell
June 1, 2014
To take control of the U.S. Senate in January, in the November general election the Republican Party needs to win six of the eight seats that Charlie Cook, Stu Rothenberg, and other pundits who pay attention to such things say are up for grabs. One of those seats is occupied by Mark Begich, Alaska’s first term Democratic senator.
Those same pundits say that the likelihood that Begich will be reelected in November is a toss-up. Except for Nate Silver, the wunderkind du jour of algorithms, who last month gave Begich a slight statistical edge. But Silver rightly cautioned that the outcome of the Alaska Senate election may be “the hardest race to forecast” because, with voters scattered in villages and small towns from Barrow south to Ketchikan, polling on the nation’s Last Frontier “is often erratic.”
In a state in which Barack Obama won a dismal 38 percent of the vote in 2008 and did only 3 percentage points better in 2012, Mark Begich should be a Dead Man Walking.
More: How Sarah Palin Could Decide Alaska’s Race for Senate
My personal opinion is that Sister Sara Phalin’s endorsement is the “Kiss of Death” for any candidate. I don’t think anyone she has endorsed has won anything other than a primary election.