Mutually Assured Destruction

This race has heated up over the past few months, leading to a redoubled advertising effort, much of it from out-of-state groups (many of the ads are, as a result, pretty clumsy). The effects of this unprecedented Outside attention are generally unclear, but it appears that Begich may not being helped as much as he's being hindered by the Lower-48 Left's helping hand.

As the DSCC and others pour negative, anti-Stevens advertising into the state and the Senator's own trial hurtles towards its conclusion, Uncle Ted's approval ratings are holding rock steady. Ivan Moore finds that Begich is still in the lead by a single point, 46% to 45%. However, more significantly, Ted Stevens seems to be winning the negative ad-war of attrition:

Stevens' rating has been very stable over the last six weeks, despite both his ongoing trial in Washington DC and being a target of a barrage of negative media funded by the DSCC. If anything, it is Begich's numbers which are deteriorating, with his positive reaching a low of 55% and his negative up over 30% for the first time.

It's relatively well-supported axiom among political scientists that negative ads drive up the negatives of both the candidate they are attacking and the candidate they're perceived as supporting; we have a ready example of this in the current presidential contest, in which an increasingly negative campaign has hurt both Sens. McCain and Obama's favorability ratings. However, it seems that in this race that Stevens may posses a special resistance to negative attacks (40 years of incredibly high-profile service have to be good for something, right?) that Begich may lack. Begich is a fresher face, yes, but he's also more malleable as a result: he has more potential to move upwards or downwards as a result of something like negative advertising. His public image is more sensitive, a factor which unquestionably played a role in John Kerry's 2004 demise.

As such, we have a scenario in which outside groups firebomb the Alaskan political landscape, and, though they are aiming at Stevens, end up burning a more flammable Begich in the end with the firestorm they've created.

Stevens Hangs Tough as "One of Us"

There are both anecdotal and statistical signals that, as his trial stutters forward, Sen. Stevens may be seeing tangible gains from the One of Us narrative, in which Alaskans react negatively to the perception of a beloved Alaskan being hounded by a corps of Lower-48 media and lawyers.

Empirically, two new polls by Fairleigh Dickinson and Ivan Moore show Stevens trailing by only 4 and 2 points, respectively. Why are we seeing a reversal of the modest trend back to Begich, who held a 6-point lead in the last poll? Stevens seems to be, against the odds, separating himself from a flailing Palin and re-developing his own identity in the race.

The anecdotal evidence sheds some light on this.

In this strange election season, some here are giving odds that "Uncle Ted" will win reelection even if he loses a pedal-to-the-metal gambit to clear his name before voters go to the polls Nov. 4.

"Even if he gets convicted . . . I don't think the people who have voted for him all these years are going to be swayed," said Gary Wilson, a 61-year-old podiatrist who lives a few blocks from the modest A-frame "chalet" that is at the center of the charges against Stevens.

Stevens is "running against a young do-gooder who's never done anything in his life," said George Dailey, who owns the candle shop on the edge of town. Voters, Dailey said, should not forget "everything Ted Stevens has done for the state of Alaska over the last 40 years."

(Side note to fellow Alaskans: how bizarre is it to see Girdwood carefully described in the LA Times?)

Alaskans aren't seeing Stevens as an extension of the GOP machine they've grown considerably less enamored of over the past few months; they're seeing him as Uncle Ted, a man who has fought for their state in Washington nearly as long as it has existed. There's also evidence that Begich has failed to define himself adequately, despite the relative vacuum he's had to work with. This means that there's a significant danger of this race becoming an up-or-down vote on Stevens. Begich must work to avoid this, and present voters with a lucid choice between Stevens and Begich, not a referendum on the Alaskan of the Century; anti-candidates don't beat 40-year incumbents.

The Palin Effect

As I alluded in my previous post, it's nigh-impossible to discuss Alaskan politics without talking about the state's newborn political megastar, Sarah Palin. Since Palin's selection for Vice President by the McCain campaign, her already immense popularity has swelled both broader and deeper. Broader in that it no longer stretches from Barrow to Juneau, but from Barrow to Florida; deeper in that it seems to have solidified her already formidable support in Alaska in terms of her approval ratings and even the polity's perception of the Republican Party in general. This has, in turn, had an enormous effect on the Begich-Stevens race.

The storyline for the race to date stands as follows:

In sum, an early modest lead for Begich--owed to growing perception amongst Alaskans of Stevens as corrupt and general dissatisfaction with the Republican Party and an unpopular Republican president--exploded into a 20+ point lead for Begich after Stevens' indictment on seven felony counts of failure to properly disclose gifts from VECO, an oil-services company. The race has qualitatively and quantitatively seemed to be solidly in Begich's hands since the indictment. However, Palin's selection seems to be a genuine game-changer (sorry, Newsweek).

Alaska-based pollster Ivan Moore has quantified this coattail effect (which begs the question of whether or not pantsuits have actual coattails). He finds that Begich went from holding a commanding 55.5% to 38.5% lead in a poll conducted August 9-12th to nearly falling within the margin of error by the start of September (remember that Palin was selected Aug. 29). The numbers now stand at Begich 48.9%, Stevens 45.6%. Ivan Moore is regarded as a competent, reliable Alaskan pollster; these numbers aren't statistical noise, but they may be simply a transient bubble. Until we have further evidence, it would be prudent to take these numbers seriously. This means that we can confidently say the race has tightened an incredible amount--we'll have to see how Palin's coattails hold up.