Stochastics: If Stevens Wins

There has been a bit of prognosticating in the comments about what might happen if Stevens were to:

• Resign prior to the election
• Win the election and then resign, or
• Win the election and then be expelled from the Senate.

I’ll walk you through the process for each scenario.

• If Stevens resigns prior to the election, Mark Begich will surely win his seat.  My guess, however, is that a good 25-35% of the electorate would still vote for Stevens as either a protest, a vote of confidence in Stevens’ innocence, or because they hadn’t heard about his resignation.
• If Stevens wins the election and then resigns, Sarah Palin doesn’t have the blanket power to appoint his successor.  You may remember the widespread discontent with former Governor Frank Murkowski after he appointed his daughter Lisa to fill his vacant Senate seat.  The state legislature, in the wake of Frank’s nepotistic choice, changed the law to state that while the Governor can appoint an interim Senator or Representative to fill a vacancy, the state must hold a special election for the seat within 90 days.
• If Stevens wins the election and is then removed by action of the Senate, the same scenario as above would play out: Palin (who would still be governor until January even if McCain wins) would appoint a  temporary replacement, then Alaskans would elect a new Senator within 90 days.

 

If we do end up holding a special election for Stevens’ seat, Mark Begich would almost certainly remain the Democratic candidate; the Republican replacement for Stevens is less certain.  My personal prediction would be Sean Parnell.  At this point it is extremely statistically unlikely that the McCain/Palin ticket will prevail in the presidential race, and Palin will therefore return as governor.  Some pundits think Palin might select herself as interim senator or declare that she intends to be the Republican candidate in the special election, but I think that would be a very unpopular decision, as it would recall Murkowski’s self-serving behavior.

Parnell seems a much stronger candidate to me, though I must say that I don’t find him a terribly inspiring speaker after hearing him speak about the economy earlier this week (I’ll post about that soon).  

In any case, at this point it’s all guesswork as to who the replacement Republican candidate would be if Stevens wins.  Post-conviction polls by Rasmussen and Research 2000 have Stevens down by 8% and 22% respectively, so perhaps none of this will come into play.  One thing Mark Begich and every other Alaskan know better than any poll result, however, is that you can never count Ted Stevens out.