The closest recent parallel I can find to the Ted Stevens situation is that of former Ohio governor Bob Taft, who in August, 2005 was convicted on misdemeanor charges of failing to disclose gifts and golf trips paid for by lobbyists. Taft plead no contest and remained in office, but this didn’t have a favorable effect on his approval ratings. He went from a 34-55 (-21) in a University of Cincinnati poll taken in April 2005 to a 26-65 (-39) in the same poll in August 2006, a net decline of 18 points.

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. That seems conservative to me, frankly, given that even the guys at RedState are abandoning Stevens, but it’s what we’ll run with until there’s some polling out.

I think there is an issue that the damage was already done *before* the trial — who really thought Stevens was innocent? Still, toss-up election, wave year — I think the odds are at least a bit over even. But then, I know little about Alaskan political sensibilities.

But I hope you’re right, either way!