More on Murkowski’s Math

There’s been quite a bit of reaction to my suggestion last night that Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is viable as a write-in candidate against Republican Joe Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams (Ms. Murkowski confirmed last night that she will indeed run a write-in candidacy.) Eric Ostermeier of the University of Minnesota, for instance, notes that there is a fairly rich history of write-in candidacies in Alaska – but none of those candidates have won their races.

It’s probably best to take a two-step approach when addressing the question of Ms. Murkowski’s chances – since there are really two separate questions we need to answer:

1. What would Ms. Murkowski’s chances be if she were listed on the ballot as an independent against Mr. Miller and Mr. McAdams?

2. How might those chances be impacted by the fact that she is not listed on the ballot, but instead is a write-in candidate?

Murkowski’s Chances as a Named Independent Candidate

The default assumption should probably be that Ms. Murkowski would have a decent chance if she were named on the ballot alongside Mr. Miller and Mr. McAdams, simply because polls which have tested this scenario show a close race.

Public Policy Polling, for instance, had Ms. Murkowski trailing Mr. Miller by just four points in a poll that hypothesized she was named on the ballot as a Libertarian candidate. And a poll by an Alaskan pollster, Dave Dittman, reportedly showed Ms. Murkowski ahead of each of her opponents, with 37 percent of the vote to 32 percent for Mr. Miller and 19 percent for Mr. McAdams.

Continues @ NYTimes.com FiveThirtyEight Blog