Things are looking good for Murkowski

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Anchorage Daily News is reporting that incumbent Lisa Murkowski is getting almost all of the write-in votes in Alaska's Senate election -- about 98 percent.

As Nate Silver explains, Republican Teabagger Joe Miller needs 11.6 percent of the almost 93,000 write-in votes to be "something other than legal ballots cast for Lisa Murkowski." Given the results so far, he has "little chance of achieving that 11.6 percent threshold":

According to reporting by the Anchorage Daily News:

• About 0.9 percent of the write-in ballots were legal votes deemed to be cast for someone other than Lisa Murkowski.
• Another 1.4 percent of write-in ballots, which appeared to be votes for Ms. Murkowski, were successfully challenged by Mr. Miller’s campaign.
• Another 8.5 percent of write-in ballots were unsuccessfully challenged by Mr. Miller's campaign and counted for Ms. Murkowski.

Together, these three categories add up to 10.8 percent: below the 11.6 percent threshold. If the first day of ballot-counting is representative of what will take place during the next four days, Ms. Murkowski would eventually be declared the winner by about 750 votes -- even if all of Joe Miller's challenges were eventually upheld in court.

Which is good news, right? Well, let us not forget that Murkowski is still a Republican even if she lost the primary vote to Miller. While her relationship with the party is somewhat unclear, it's highly likely that she'll be welcomed back with open arms, not least because Miller proved to be such a lousy candidate, not to mention an extremist thug even by Republicans standards, and many of the more establishment-minded Republicans of the sort who inhabit Capitol Hill flocked to Murkowski instead.

But is she preferable to Miller? Sure. And would her victory be a blow to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party? Yes, absolutely.

So there you go.