From the Anchorage Daily News:
Joe Miller’s lead over U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski slightly narrowed to 1,668 votes with all the election precincts counted Wednesday. A stunned Murkowski said she is not giving up hope until absentee ballots are counted starting next week.
“It ain’t over yet, folks,” Murkowski said at her campaign headquarters in Anchorage. “There are thousands of absentees that are yet to come in.”
Miller was leading with 47,027 votes to 45,359 for Murkowski after the final precinct results came in late Wednesday afternoon. More than 16,000 absentees were requested from the Division of Elections and about 7,600 of them have come back so far.
Murkowski is, for the time being, dodging questions about a third-party or write-in candidacy. More here.
UPDATE: Reader Mike Kryschtal e-mails with the numbers:
Alaska does not have an open primary. In order to vote for Republican candidates in the primary election, the voter must either be a registered Republican, or nonpartisan and undeclared, these votes are cast on a Republican ballot. The other two types of ballots that may be requested are one for the Democrat, Alaska Libertarian, and Alaska Independence Party, and the third that allows the voter to vote for Motions only (no candidates listed).
5801 absentee ballots were mailed out to Alaskans requesting the Republican absentee ballot.
98,187 ballots for the Senate primary were either submitted in early voting, cast on election day, or may have been cast as Republican absentee ballots.
In order to win the Republican Senate primary a candidate must have at least 49,094 votes (50% plus 1).
Joe Miller currently has 47,027 votes. He needs 2067 out of the available 5801 (36%) possible absentee votes to win.
Lisa Murkowski currently has 45359 votes. She needs 3735 out of the available 5801 (64%) possible absentee votes to win.
This calculation assumes that all 5801 Republican absentee ballots are returned and counted.
The numbers I list are available at the State of Alaska, Division of Elections. I extracted the number 5801 Republican absentee ballots from the cards cast report for the 40 reporting districts in Alaska. Thank you.