As the number of ballots left to count dwindles toward zero, staffers for U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski's historic write-in campaign are looking forward to the moment they can declare victory over Joe Miller.

"By the end of the day today anyone with simple arithmetic skills can draw some conclusions," said Murkowski campaign manager Kevin Sweeney. "By the end of the day tomorrow the count will actually be done so the campaign can make a declaration."

The Miller campaign continues to insist that the race is "far from over." In a Tuesday morning press release Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto compared the number of unchallenged votes for Murkowski with the number of votes Miller has received. The problem with his statement is that right now the Division of Elections is counting those ballots, putting Murkowski more than 1,700 votes ahead. Miller has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the division from counting the challenged ballots, but he faces an uphill legal climb to do so.

It's also possible that Murkowski will amass enough votes to win even without those challenged ballots, though the margin would be much narrower.

Counting started a few hours later than normal Tuesday, so instead of the normal two ballot updates the Division of Elections will only release one update towards the end of the day. Check back around 5:30 p.m.

According to Sweeney, the remaining ballots will continue to swing the margin in Murkowski's favor. There are about 8,000 write-in ballots being counted today, Sweeney said, of which Murkowski should reap about 97 percent. The only other votes left to count are the up to 700 special advance ballots (though presumably far fewer) that have been mailed in, as well as a small handful of votes from a few rural precincts that were late arriving, Sweeny said.

Chris Clark, a Murkowski observer who has been watching the counting since Wednesday, said he's seen fewer instances of Miller observers challenging ballots solely on penmanship issues. Clark was also feeling good about Murkowski's chances.

"There's a buzz in the air, that's for sure," Clark said.

Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com.