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FAIRBANKS--Former Gov. Tony Knowles congratulated Sen. Lisa Murkowski on her victory in the U.S. Senate race Wednesday afternoon and said he didn?t think the remaining uncounted votes would change the results.

?In keeping with my pledge to put Alaska first, I?ve called Sen. Lisa Murkowski and congratulated her on her victory in the U.S. Senate race,? Knowles said at a teleconferenced event with supporters in Anchorage. ?We agreed that it?s in the best interest of Alaska that we move forward. We had a good conversation.?

The latest numbers from the state Division of Elections, at 2:10 p.m. Wednesday, show Murkowski with 49.28 percent of the vote and Knowles with 44.93 percent.

?I believe that even though there is approximately 25 percent of the vote yet to be counted, it?s improbable that I would be able to make up existing differences. It could be weeks until that process is completed,? Knowles said.

Matt McKenna, Knowles? spokesman, said the campaign believes the Division of Elections counted about 245,000 votes election night. The campaign estimates that another 40,000 absentee ballots and 30,000 questioned ballots are yet to be counted.

?We believe there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 outstanding votes,? McKenna said.

Knowles had declined to concede earlier Wednesday. As the hours went by, the Knowles campaign analyzed how the absentees were breaking, McKenna said. They appeared to be running 54-42 in Murkowski?s favor.

?That?s part of the reason we think the odds are not on our side,? he said. ?This is pretty simple math. We don?t think the votes are there.?

However, questioned ballots traditionally have more Democratic votes, McKenna said. As a result, there is still some chance that Knowles could win.

?That?s part of the reason we are not mathematically out of this race, even if we are probably out,? he said.

Knowles said he nevertheless wants all the votes counted. The Alaska Democratic Party will monitor that process, he said. McKenna said counting all the votes is traditional in Alaska and the campaign has no indication that there will be a problem with the process.

An hour after Knowles began his concession statement, Murkowski held an event in Anchorage to declare victory.

?My thank you to all Alaskans, thank you for this vote of confidence,? Murkowski said.

Murkowski said the vote came out exactly as her pollsters had predicted in recent days. The campaign was expensive and hard-fought, she said.

?We recognized going into this that this was a different campaign. It was not just a race between Lisa Murkowski and Tony Knowles. It was a race for control of the Senate,? she said.

In the end, Republicans picked up several seats and will hold a 55-vote majority in the U.S. Senate.

?We weren?t able to count on that all along,? Murkowski said. ?But the balance of the Senate was very much an issue.?

The new, larger Republican majority makes her think about the possibilities of opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Murkowski?s spokeswoman, Kristin Pugh, said earlier in the day that she didn?t see much chance of Knowles overtaking Murkowski during upcoming counts.

?From the numbers we have, the former governor would have to win 84 percent of the outstanding ballots. That?s including absentees, which obviously usually skew Republican,? she said.

Absentee and questioned ballots will be counted by Nov. 17.

According to vote totals available very early Wednesday morning, Murkowski ran strong in Fairbanks and the Interior, winning most precincts by substantial margins.

Some interesting anomalies appeared, though.

Voters at the Fort Wainwright Army Post didn?t turn out in great numbers but those that did virtually tied the vote between Knowles with 573 and Murkowski with 583. That contrasted with their 2-1 support for Republican President George Bush over Democratic Sen. John Kerry.

Knowles during the campaign criticized Murkowski for her vote against a Democratic amendment that would have put veterans health-care funding on a mandatory, inflation-proofed formula. McKenna wasn?t leaping to claim that theme as a cause of the strong showing on Wainwright, though.

?Right now, our focus is to sort out the ballots yet to be counted,? he said.

Murkowski, in response, emphasized her work for an extra $1.2 billion for veterans health care. Nevertheless, ?there?s a very real possibility that the truth and the fact of her record and the real results that she delivered did not get through the clutter,? Pugh said.

In Valdez, Knowles also virtually tied Murkowski in two of three precincts. Murkowski had a solid lead in the third.

Knowles criticized Murkowski heavily for her vote in favor of a corporate tax bill that he said gave Exxon a tax break. Exxon vehemently denied his allegation. But McKenna said Knowles? stand still may have reverberated in Prince William Sound.

?I absolutely think folks in those communities were happy to see someone stand up to Exxon,? McKenna said. ?I think that is not only Tony Knowles standing up to Exxon but also his record on behalf of the fishing industry as governor.?

Pugh said the Exxon attack was a ?lie.? More likely, Valdez was close because the Alaska Democratic Party opened an office with paid staff there, she said.

?We had a wonderful volunteer corps,? she said.

Valdez sits in District 12, which stretches north all the way to Eielson Air Force Base and west to Sutton on the Glenn Highway. Murkowski won by huge margins everywhere but Sutton, where she basically split about 400 votes evenly.

In District 8, the western Interior highway district, the results were more diverse and Knowles won overall, 5,354-4,624. The district stretches from Ester and western Goldstream Valley south to Cantwell on the Parks Highway, about half way to Anchorage.

Within that district, Murkowski won solidly in Clear, Anderson, Healy and Cantwell. Between Healy and Cantwell, though, at Denali Park, something went awry and she lost to Knowles 98-10.

Closer to Fairbanks, Knowles won solidly in Ester, western Goldstream, the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and the University Hills area. He and Murkowski virtually tied in University West and Geist, with Knowles winning by about 20 votes in each.

In District 11, covering eastern Fairbanks suburbs along Badger Road and in North Pole, Murkowski won by an almost 2-to-1 margin. Absentees from the district actually ran more than 3-to-1 in her favor.

In District 9, which includes eastern city of Fairbanks and Fort Wainwright, Murkowski won three out of five precincts. Knowles won among those who voted downtown at Golden Towers and he nearly tied Murkowski on Fort Wainwright.

In the western city, District 10, Murkowski won but not by a large margin. She took five of the more northern precincts, Knowles took two south Fairbanks precincts and they basically tied in voting at University Center and the Noel Wien Library.

In District 6, which stretches across all of rural Interior Alaska, Knowles won but by less than 400 votes out of almost 8,000 counted Election Night. Murkowski won in the larger communities of Nenana, Tok and Deltana but lost in most of the smaller villages on the rivers.

Reporter Sam Bishop can be reached at sbishop@newsminer.com or 459-7574.