Thaindian News

By Meena Kar
Nov 3, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The Alaska Senate Election results have been declared. Like many other states, the republican made it to the Senate as Joe Miller received 34.2 percent of the votes, defeating Democrat Scott McAdams, who got 23.7 percent. However, it was the “write-in” candidate, represented by Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski who secured the majority with 41 percent of the total votes, out of the 74 percent turnouts recorded.

81,876 votes were caste in favor of “write-ins”, Joe Miller received 68,288 votes, Scott T. McAdams bagged 47,414 votes, Liberal representative David Haase received 1,084, which is only 0.5 percent of the total votes, independent contender Tim Carter got only 712 or 0.4 percent of the votes and finally another independent contender Ted Gianoutsos got 327 or just 0.2 percent of the total votes. Being a Republican, Lisa Murkowski decided to split and compete as a “write-in” candidate, which involved a high risk quotient as no one won in this category since 1954. This “split” was also regarded as a point of benefit for the Democrats as they thought that it would bifurcate the Republic votes into two parts. However, even though it divided the Republican votes, it was not much beneficial for the Democrats.

This is because if the two Republicans are compared, then Joe Miller is more inclined towards the conservative wing of his party and wants to demolish Department of Education, wants to privatize social security, opposes health care overhaul and unemployment benefits, which made him quite unpopular. His popularity was further reduced when reports came up that he received farm subsidies and other government largesse. That is the reason why Lisa Murkowski was confident and secured about her popularity as she is more of a mainstream Republican, who addresses to several social issues and thereby making a mark amongst the loyal Democrats, Environmentalists and Libertarians.