America's punching bag?

Nate Silver takes his best guess at why, after being convicted on seven felony counts last week, Alaska Senator Ted "HULKSMASHTUBES" Stevens is leading Democrat Mark Begich in their Senate race. This is especially interesting because it asploded all of 538's projections, which were dead-on in virtually every other race:

There are three plausible explanations I can think of to explain this discrepancy. The first and most likely is that the Democratic vote became complacent and did not bother to turn out. The outcome of the presidential contest was not going to be close in Alaska, and Barack Obama's victory in the Electoral College was apparent as of about 4 PM local time. Begich supporters, moreover, may have looked at the polls and concluded that their candidate was far enough ahead that they didn't have to bother to vote.

In other words, while many of you were initially inclined to look at this race and mock your backwoods brethren for endorsing a convicted felon, perhaps those self-righteous fingers are better pointed at Anchorage liberals who figured, "No way this state is going for Obama and Begich has to have it in the bag, right? Right?"

Right.