Kentucky Senate Race Tightens

Jack Conway is now only 2 points behind Tea Party favorite Rand Paul.

The latest poll of the Kentucky Senate race continues the trend showing Jack Conway to be well within striking distance of Republican candidate Rand Paul.

Democrat Jack Conway has cut sharply into Republican Rand Paul’s once-commanding lead in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race, moving into a statistical tie with a little more than five weeks before Election Day, according to the latest Courier-Journal/WHAS11 Bluegrass Poll.

The poll shows that Conway, the state’s attorney general, is now appealing to voters who say they are neutral on the tea party — Paul’s base of support.

And Conway is building a significant lead among women, who earlier were almost evenly split between the two candidates.

According to the poll, Paul leads Conway 49 percent to 47 percent, with 4 percent undecided. That lead is well within the poll’s 4 percentage point margin of error.

This is one of those races that won’t surprise me to go either way. But still, the Republican candidate for Senate should not be facing this tight of a race in Kentucky. Once again, it’s possible that the Tea Party’s preferred candidate may prevent the GOP from gaining a Senate seat…

FILED UNDER: 2010 Election, US Politics, , , ,
Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. Dodd says:

    As I observed on Twitter this morning, and Allahpundit explained at greater length this afternoon, the CJ’s sample is skewed pretty sharply. To believe it, as he notes, you have to believe Kentuckians have suddenly decided to turn out for Conway at greater rates than they did for Obama.

    Ain’t gonna happen. Paul could still lose, but it’s not as close as that poll makes it out to be. We’re in the usual stage of the polling cycle where MSM polls skew toward the Dems. Expect the race to open back up three weeks from now when they start “fine-tuning” their models to get their end of cycle results as accurate as possible..

  2. Tano says:

    Wow, thats quite the conspiracy theory Dodd. Why ain’t they doin’ that for Lee Fisher, or Brad Ellsworth, of Joe Manchin, or Robin Carnahan, or Russ Feingold or……

  3. Jay Dubbs says:

    At this point it is all about how pollsters weigh the raw data. But the trend does seem to be going against some of the Tea Party favorites.

  4. Zelsdorf Ragshaft III says:

    Tano, you believe what you like. Come November 3rd, you will be talking out of the other side of your mouth. There are none so blind as those who will not see. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear. The sound you will hear that day is the sound of the American people saying no to a socialist agenda. Acadamia seldom produces leader of worth. The Obama admin. is just full of college profs. All theory no fact.

  5. Dodd says:

    It’s not a “conspiracy theory,” dude. It’s an easily verifiable prediction based on years of past behaviour.

  6. Tano says:

    So Dudd,

    I repeat my question. Why aren’t the grand manipulators doing the same favor for all the other Dem senatorial candidates?