Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell appears to be in good shape to win reelection on Tuesday, according to the final Bluegrass Poll of the Kentucky Senate race.
The 30-year incumbent leads Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes by 5 points, a margin of 48 percent to 43 percent, just outside the margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.1 percentage points.
Libertarian David Patterson has 3 percent and an additional 6 percent are undecided.
The same survey showed McConnell up by just 1 point in mid-October. He actually trailed Grimes by 2 points in a Bluegrass poll released early October.
The poll, conducted by SurveyUSA for major Kentucky newspapers and TV stations, features interviews with 597 likely voters in Kentucky from Oct. 25-29.
It extends McConnell’s lead to 3.2 percentage points in the TPM PollTracker average.
Grimes has really not run a very effective campaign. Whether or not she felt like she could answer that question about whether or not she voted for Obama is not the issue. The issue is that she was too afraid to tell the people the truth about Kynect, and that like it or not, that program the people of Kentucky really likes is tied directly to the ACA.
Yes she made an issue on the minimum wage and equal pay, but in a state where their 30 year long Senator had approval ratings in the 30’s, it is clear that people who are voting for him have not had it made clear enough to them that he has openly and consistently been lying to them about Kynect.
Had she not been afraid to be truthful with them, and basically tell them, that yes, even though they may not like this President, the fact is that their Kynect is directly tied to the ACA, and will cease to exist if McChinless and his cohorts are successful at either repealing it, or so badly defunding it that it dies on it’s own from lack of funding. Kentucky is one of the most successful states where the ACA is concerned, and all of those hundreds of thousands of people who signed up for it and now have insurance, did so because they needed it.
This was my gripe the other day, when I was attacked by one person who called me a “unicorn progressive”, not that she did not run on Obama’s record, but that she did not use the one thing that Obama did that was very popular in their state, and make it clear that McChinless, and his party having the majority, could result in them losing it. Their popular Dem Governor had no problem going on air time and time again and making this clear, but for some reason Grimes failed to make it as important of an issue in their campaign as she should have. As they say, all politics are local, and Kynect is a very local issue in Kentucky.
And she’d be down in the polls ten points as opposed to being neck and neck with him. When are you going to understand that “politics is local” and for Grimes to publicly associate herself with Obama in KY where his approval is 30% is politically stupid?
The only thing to understand is all politics is local, including this race. Obama isn’t popular in KY, hence why Grimes is politically smart not to associate herself with him. She’s not running a campaign in a left wing state, she’s running in a red state, and no amount of praising Obama is acceptable there. Heck, Mary Landrieu more or less made that case herself in Louisiana when asked.
So sad for Kentuckians. Mitch McConnell is their Emperor Palpatine.
> It ain’t over 'til it’s over!
On May 20,2008,Hillary beat Barack 65.5%-30% in KY. He never was popular with KY Dems.