I’d be very surprised to see Allison Lundergan Grimes unseat Mitch McConnell next month. National observers have largely written her off after national Democrats decided to refocus dollars on other campaigns. And her fairly comical explanations for why she wouldn’t say whether she voted for Barack Obama certainly didn’t help. But it’s hard to write her off entirely when we keep getting polls showing her only one point behind like this one.
The story is further complicated by the fact that the public polls of this race have been heavily weighted toward either explicitly partisan polls – on both sides – or junk polls like Gravis Marketing, Rasmussen or Fox.
The poll I noted above is from SurveyUSA, conducting the “Bluegrass Poll” for the Lexington Herald-Leader. They polled two weeks ago too. And had Grimes up by two. Given margins of error, those are basically tie polls.
The other legit and independent poll was from CBS/NYT/YouGov, which showed a 6 point margin for McConnell, over a polling period from 9/20 to 10/1.
For those looking to get excited about this race, I caution you that party committees often have access to internal polling data and historical knowledge that allows them to make tough decisions about where to put money. In other words, don’t assume they’re stupid. My own gut sense is that Grimes is facing the daunting disadvantage of running an in extremely anti-Obama state in what looks to be at best an iffy year for Democrats. Those are the sorts of gravitational factors that end of dooming a candidacy even when it’s really close.
All that said though, if legitimate pollsters are showing it a tie race, we can’t say this one’s done.
