We ended last night looking at a net Republican pickup of seven Senate seats, meaning the fewest possible Republicans in the new majority would be 52. Alaska returns come in late, of course, and it often takes time to finalize them because it's not easy collecting all the results from remote areas of the Last Frontier.
But as of now, with 100 percent of precincts reporting but a few stray ballots still to be counted, it looks like Republican Dan Sullivan has defeated incumbent Democrat Mark Begich. Sullivan leads by about 8,000 votes, and all that remains is to count about 20,000 absentee ballots. Given the trend of the rest of the state, it's hard to imagine Begich takes the absentee ballots by a margin of 14,000 to 6,000 and ties it up, but I guess that's what he's banking on in refusing to concede.
Chances are we've confirmed pretty soon, though, that Alaska represents pickup number 8 and brings the GOP majority to at least 53.
