This page is part of an undergraduate assignment at Davidson College.

Murkowski - Knowles Outcome Assessment

Murkowski won because...

• Bush was re-elected President. Sabato believed that Murkowski would be elected if Bush did very well in Alaska. While Bush garnered 62% of the Alaskan vote and Murkowski won, the two were not necessarily related. Of those who voted for Bush, only 77% also voted for Murkowski, compared to the 91% of Kerry voters who also voted for Knowles. Murkowski's victory was not so much a result of Bush winning Alaska, but instead, the combination of highly contested Senate and Presidential races led to high voter turnout, which helped Murkowski because in Alaska Republicans outnumber Democrats 2 to 1.
• People did not care about the nepotism issue. Of the two-thirds of voters that thought her appointment in 2002 was inappropriate, less than a third of those voted for her anyway (Volz). Alaskan voters obviously did care about her appointment because a statewide ballot passed to end Senate appointments by the governor (Volz). While exit polls show that Murkowski lost some votes because of her appointment, the issue did not effect the campaign as much as anticipated.
• Alaskan Congressmen Stevens and Young campaigned strongly for her at the end of the campaign. Professor Shepro believes that the influence of the Alaska's two most popular congressmen "may have been the difference in the election" (Volz). This is evidenced by Murkowski's five point jump in the polls during the final weeks of the campaign, which Anchorage pollster David Dittman credits to Steven's campaign help (Inklebarger).

Consistency Throughout the Election

• Throughout the campaign, Murkowski asked voters to consider not how she got the job but what she has done with it, and for a majority of the campaign, Knowles was ahead in public opinion polls, until the final weeks of the election, when polls conducted in the last week of October showed Murkowski with in the lead. Coincidentally, these polls numbers came a week after Murkowski and Stevens appeared together in TV ads and at campaign events (The Hotline 11/01/04). This shift in campaign strategy appeared to win some last minute support for Murkowski. Instead of voting on Murkowski's accomplishments, Alaskans were told to think of Murkowski as part of a team, and that a vote for Knowles was like a vote against Stevens (Volz).
• This final campaign strategy marked a definite change in Murkowski's argument to voters, but pollster Ivan Moore said, "They've left this until the end because this is [Murkowski's] killer argument" (The Hotline 10/21/04). However the shift devalues the importance of Murkowski as a politician and her position that Alaskans should look at her accomplishments, but the tradeoff helped Murkowski win without compromising issue positions. Murkowski could afford to use the team strategy because she had few individual accomplishments.

Sources

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This page was created for a political science course.

Send comments to Scott Buckhout (scbuckhout@davidson.edu).

Created: December 4, 2004

Updated: December 6, 2004