The Alaska Debate Begich and Dunleavy

There are just 2½ weeks until Election Day, and it was an election Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, looked likely to lose. Instead, on Friday, he abruptly ended his campaign and threw his support to the Democrat in the race, Mark Begich.Walker’s re-election hopes against Dunleavy got even fainter when Democrat Mark Begich, a former senator and mayor of Anchorage, got into the race. Polling showed Dunleavy leading each candidate by double digits. A recent Alaska Survey Research poll found Dunleavy with 43 percent of the vote and Begich and Walker splitting the rest of it, with about 26 percent each. So it stands to reason that if you combined their two votes entirely, Begich could have enough to win.It’s not entirely clear why Walker left, but it is clear that a number of things in the past few weeks haven’t gone his way. And the state of the race gets slightly more competitive for Democrats as a result, but Republicans still have the upper hand, just as they did before Walker suddenly dropped out.Anchorage Daily News WP