AK Senate polling post-Smash

Stats savant Nate Silver takes a shot at predicting Ted Stevens' (Felon-AK) upcoming plunge in the polls courtesy of yesterday's little incident.

Let's assume that Stevens will also suffer a decline in his net approval score of 18 points. Since he's at roughly 50/50 now, that would put him in the range of 40 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove. Our regression model uses approval ratings for incumbent senators as one of its inputs, and thinks a decline of this magnitude would cost a senator about 6 points in the polls ... actually, 5.8 points. So what we're going to do is apply a 5.8 point penalty to Stevens' numbers in Alaska. Since the race was a toss-up before, this puts him about 6 points behind overall, making Mark Begich an 87 percent favorite to take his seat.

Silver is quick to call this forecast preliminary and even "conservative," but we won't really know until the polls commissioned yesterday come back in. Stay tuned and keep your eyes on Minnesota, Georgia, Mississippi, and Kentucky.