Page 30 - Absentees News Today

Debt and government spending. >> brett: we forget we are in the heat of this primary race but this is setting up to a general election in florida will play a pivotally in that battle? >> obviously, it will. it has for the last two elections, its not too much of an exaggeration the candidate that wins florida wins the white house. the republican candidate, conventional wisdom, the republican cannot win the white house without winning florida. if a democrat wins florida that is enough to swing the...

Debt and government spending. >> brett: we forget we are in the heat of this primary race but this is setting up to a general election in florida will play a pivotally in that battle? >> obviously, it will. it has for the last two elections, its not too much of an exaggeration the candidate that wins florida wins the white house. the republican candidate, conventional wisdom, the republican cannot win the white house without winning florida. if a democrat wins florida that is enough to swing the...

Began saturday the day of the south carolina primary, i think were in good shape in early voting, in absentees we chased them as well. i think newt is going to do fine because he does present in sharp contrast. we have a number of his former supporters, friends and colleagues in congress like j. c. watson and bob walker and senator fred thompson are all down here courtroom panic for him. campaigning for him. i think we will do very, very well. bill: nobody predicted the outcome of south carolina...

Chairman of the florida republican party. this is critical stuff, because the florida vote is already underway, right? folks are already mailing in their absentee ballots. >> thats right. with absentees and early voting already close to 230,000 votes cast. jon: all right. >> so florida is on the move. id say to the candidates, welcome to florida. >> onjon they are already obviously working for the vote. what do you think the big issue is? >> my hope is, my message is that the negative campaignin...

The republican primary pretty amazing. they had 20,000 ballots that they were either absentees or provisional ballots they had to count. i suspect when they began counting today her observers in those count rooms probably saw they were not breaking dramatically for her. she needed to win those by 54, 55, 56% depending on how many there were to overcome the nearly 1600 vote deficit she had. obviously her people said to her it wasnt breaking her way. >> greta: double for governor sarah palin. she ...

The republican primary pretty amazing. they had 20,000 ballots that they were either absentees or provisional ballots they had to count. i suspect when they began counting today her observers in those count rooms probably saw they were not breaking dramatically for her. she needed to win those by 54, 55, 56% depending on how many there were to overcome the nearly 1600 vote deficit she had. obviously her people said to her it wasnt breaking her way. >> greta: double for governor sarah palin. she ...

Theres an advantage. michael barone, who is an expert and has been following absentee ballots put it this way. >> in alaska, lisa murkowski is hoping the absentee ballots come in heavily for her because she had a big lead over this challenger joe miller in the polls that were taken six and four and even two weeks before the election, but it became close later. so shes likely to do better with those votes that were cast earlier. >> reporter: sort question really becomes does she do better enough ...

>> there are thousands of absentees that have yet to come in. that whole process will be taken place. clearly there was a shift, whether it was kind of the antiincouple beejanuary antiinct know, i havent spent that much time dwelling on it. >> reporter: she may now. her dad was governor and he was unseated by sarah palin. who is joe miller? hes the antiestablishment candidate. ivy league west point graduate. he served in the military and moved to alaska because of his love for the outdoors.

Joe miller spent $198,000 on his campaign. thats a fraction of lisa murkowskis $1.9 million. and he is leading by a whisper. it may come down to the 16,000 absentee ballots sent out by the state. 7,600 were sent out. as long as they are postdated by election day they are counted as absentees. sarah palin endorsed joe miller. >> this is a heavy-handed government that put us down economically and they look at constitution as the way out.

Lets talk about it with larry sabato, director of the university of virginias center for politics. larry, i have to point out, a couple of days ago, you thought mur murkowski was going to win this thing. what do you think has happened here? >> yes. every single source that i have in alaska told me that lisa murkowski would not only win, she would win handily. those same sources told me this morning that there arent enough votes left out, even including the absentees, for murkowski to win. mur co...