Who is the most endangered incumbent?

[Mogrovejo]

I'm surprised that Begich ranks so low. In my view he's always been the most endangered incumbent (sans Walsh). Always seemed to me he only had two paths to victory: one through Miller winning the Republican primary; the other by winning with a plurality on the back of strong showing by third party candidates. Miller lost (and endorsed Sullivan); the LP and the IP nominated two underfunded some dudes so I don't think there's a plausible scenario where Begich comes out in front (customary LBDG caveats)

He only won by the smallest of margins in 2008, a very democratic year, while facing an opponent who became a convicted criminal in the course of the campaign and had both presidential candidates, both party senate leaders and the very popular state governor calling him to step down and retire from politics. He benefited a lot from Palin's favourite daughter effect as a bunch of low turnout voters (by definition not particularly partisan) went to the voting booths: many of those had never voted for Stevens (or anyone else) and mostly saw an old, corrupt, incumbent opposed by both party leaders vs a sunny Begich. Since then, his approvals were always tepid at best and have been underwater for awhile, with his favs generally lingering in the low 40s. He'll need to convince reliable Republican voters who disapprove of his and Obama's job performance to cross-over and vote for him. Heck, as I'm fairly sure that Stevens would have won with this year's turnout, Begich will need the votes of people who voted for McCain and Romney, who almost always vote Republican, who disapprove of a bunch of policies he supported, who voted for a convicted criminal over him and who view his job and his national party unfavourably to vote for him. Who are these voters going to be? Very few - he'd need to turn Sullivan into a repulsive choice and I see no signs he's doing that (or that it's even possible). Therefore he's toast. The guys in the South have legacy votes, higher seniority, some residual infrastructure in the Dem turf. Begich has the kind of stuff that brings him to an above average score for a Dem in AK but nothing to catapult him to a victory in a race vs a generic GOPer.

PS - FWIW, Begich lead in a single LV poll the entire race (from March till last week): the YouGov first poll in July  (at the peak of an acrimonious Republican primary). I suspect there won't be a second one till election day.