KY-Sen: Paul Takes a Huge Primary Lead Over Grayson, Conway Leads Mongiardo

Public Policy Polling (12/18-21, likely voters):

Rand Paul (R): 44

Trey Grayson (R): 25

Undecided: 32

(MoE: ±4.5%)

That’s an absolutely stunning lead for Paul, and some major egg-on-face for Mitch McConnell and the NRSC brain trust. We haven’t seen a lot of public polling of the GOP primary, but warning signs emerged in August for Grayson, Kentucky’s Secretary of State, when SurveyUSA released a poll showing him leading Paul by only 37-26. Research 2000 followed that up a couple of weeks later with a 40-25 Grayson lead. Just last month, SUSA followed up on the race and found that Paul had actually eked into a narrow 35-32 lead. Given the amount of heat that Grayson has been directing Paul’s way in the past week over his ex-campaign spokesman’s questionable association with white supremacists on MySpace, you know that Grayson realizes that he’ll need to fight his way out of this one in a desperate fashion.

Now, you might think that a Paul primary win would be good news for Democrats, but check out what PPP is teasing about the still-to-be-released general election numbers:

the Kentucky general election numbers we’ll release Wednesday show Rand Paul doing only one point worse than Trey Grayson against Jack Conway and three points worse against Dan Mongiardo.

That said, Paul definitely represents a weirder strain of Republican conservatism that could end up being a liability in a general election. His questionable inner circle is one thing, but consider also Ron Paul’s non-position on 9/11 Trutherism. As an outsider, Paul is riding on a high against the establishment’s hand-picked candidate, but his freak-wing politics will be ripe for clobbering if he makes it through a primary.

And for the Democrats…

Jack Conway (D): 37

Dan Mongiardo (D): 33

Undecided: 30

(MoE: ±4.2%)

This is the first poll we’ve seen of Conway leading Mongiardo all year. SUSA gave Mongiardo an 11-point lead in November (up from 8 in August), while R2K found Conway trailing by 37-30 in September. In any case, Mongiardo enjoys broader name recognition, so Conway has some room for growth here.

22 thoughts on “KY-Sen: Paul Takes a Huge Primary Lead Over Grayson, Conway Leads Mongiardo”

  2. but they’re likely to be unpopular – especially, I would think, in a Republican primary:

    ” … it’s kind of unclear whether these people are guilty, not guilty … So I really think deportation or sending them back to their country of origin might be the best way to go.  And none of it’s fair, because some of them have been held years and years …”

    I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it may come to that if testimony extracted under torture is excluded in some cases.

    But that isn’t the point, and I don’t want to discuss the issue here. All I’m interested in is whether voters in KY – particularly Republicans – are willing to accept this kind of musing.

  3. We all know about Ron Paul’s ” weirder strain of Republican conservatism” but does his son share his views?

    Is Rand Paul an isolationist? Is he for abolishing the Fed? Legalizing drugs? Against the Patriot Act?

    These are all Ron Paul’s libertarian views and part of what makes his strain of Republicanism “wierd”.

    The question is does Rand agree with his father on these issues?

    If not he might be able to position himself as a Tom Colburn anti-establishment type without scaring people off with his father’s way out there views.

    If Rand is less dogmatic than his father he might be harder to beat than a lot of people think.

  5. If Rand Paul is just like his father and has libertarian beliefs on many social, civil liberties/national security and foreign policy issues…then the GOP base (especially neo-con evangelicals) will inevitably become aware of this and rally to Grayson en masse. And its entirely conceivable that if Paul wins the primary his Dem opponent is to his right on civil liberties/national security and foreign policy. And also on a const. amend. to ban gay marriage assuming Paul is like his dad on that. But really i dont know where the Dems stand on those 3 though i have a hunch Mongiardo is for the amendment. And really its hard to be any more libertarian than Ron Paul on foreign policy and civil liberties/national security unless youre a hardcore libertarian. But this is assuming Rand is like his dad and ive never really heard him try to differentiate himself. Ethan Hastert seems a little different as hes accepting the Main Street PAC money while his dad wasnt aligned with that group at all (but he isnt a far rightie either).

  6. if Conway and Paul face each other in November and the DSCC invests in the race it’s ours to lose. Paul will be easy to attack, Conway is as strong as they come in Kentucky. I’m not sure Conway will be a very good Senator, but he can win if he’s running against Paul.  

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