Nate Silver Says: Hulk Smashed Toobz Worth -6 Points

FiveThirtyEight:

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.

Yesterday when I heard the Stevens verdict, I let out a "whoop!"  But if he is indeed Baked Alaska, that’s one vote closer to…gulp…Lieberman being 60.

Please, by all that is holy, do not let that happen.  Fifty-seven, sixty-one, but not sixty.