Something is rotten in the state of Alaska

Update 11/17/08:  
Turnout may actually break a record.


Update 11/11/08:

Elections officials now report that uncounted ballots number closer to 100,000 than 50,000, so turnout is a much more reasonable 63%, with time enough for a few thousand more ballots to arrive before counting begins later this week.

Alaska has a large vote-by-mail population, so it may be that ballots were simply delayed. It will be interesting to see if the vote-by-mail folks break heavily Democratic, making the polls more accurate than previously thought.

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In a banner year for Democratic candidates from Obama on down, here's what happened in Alaska:

• Convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens leads by 1% despite pre-election polls showing him down by 15 points.
• Alaska Rep. Don Young won re-election despite being under investigation for corruption by the FBI and despite trailing by at least 5% in pre-election polls (in fact, he trailed in every poll since 2007).
• "The national polling firm, Rasmussen Reports, accurately predicted every Senate race in the country within the margin of error in their most recent polls -- except Alaska"
  

Here's a great summary graphic from fivethirtyeight.com illustrating the anomaly. The first column shows the latest polls, the second is the result. "Delta" is the difference:

• It wasn't just a strange slide toward Republicans, but voter turnout in Alaska was inexplicably low, 45 percent, after reaching 60 percent and 66 percent in 2000 and 2004 and after turnout was up 12 percent from 2004 in the primary. (the addition of 50,000 absentee ballots only brings turnout up to 52 percent).

How bad is that turnout figure? I did a quick comparison, pulling 2004 turnout data from here and then searching for newspaper reports of 2008 turnout. It's not exactly apples to apples, but Alaska clearly stands out.

The news on this is starting to spread. Let's hope there's a full-scale investigation.