Hope for Senate Dems in AK, MN

An AP analysis of returns in Minnesota shows that most of the "undervotes" are from counties won by Barack Obama.

"The finding could have implications for Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken, who are headed for a recount separated by the thinnest of margins — a couple of hundred votes, or about 0.01 percent.

About 25,000 ballots statewide carried votes for president but not for the Senate race. Although some voters might have intentionally bypassed the race, others might have mismarked their ballot, or optical scanning machines might have misread them.

...Three counties — Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis, which contain the population centers of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth — account for 10,540 votes in the dropoff between the presidential race and the Senate race. Each saw Obama win with 63 percent or more of the vote."

Nate Silver's analysis of Alaska's uncounted votes also provides some hope for Begich.

Although Ted Stevens currently holds a lead of approximately 3,200 votes in ballots counted to date in Alaska's senate contest, there is good reason to believe that the ballots yet to be counted -- the vast majority of which are early and absentee ballots -- will allow Mark Begich to mitigate his disadvantage with Stevens and quite possibly pull ahead of him.

The reasoning behind this is simple: some early ballots have been processed, and among those ballots Begich substantially leads Stevens. A tally of Alaska's 40 house districts as taken from Alaska's Division of Elections webpage suggests that Begich has won about 61% of the early ballots counted so far, as compared with 48% of ballots cast on Election Day itself.