KY-Sen: Paul Leads Conway by 3

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (5/24-26, likely voters, 5/10-12 in parens):

Jack Conway (D): 41 (39)

Rand Paul (R): 44 (42)

Undecided: 15 (19)

(MoE: ±4%)

Coming off a close primary victory, Jack Conway is more beat up than Rand Paul, holding a favorable rating of 48-43 compared to Paul’s 53-33, but he’s still holding the line reasonably well. Conway wins among Dem voters by 75-7 but is losing independents by 31-42. The congressional district breakdowns are interesting, too, with Conway winning only the Louisville-based 3rd CD (by 63-26) and pulling a 43-43 draw in Ben Chandler’s 6th District. Conway’s weakest spot is the Western/Central-based 2nd CD (which contains Paul’s home base of Bowling Green), where he loses to Paul by 24-54.

83 thoughts on “KY-Sen: Paul Leads Conway by 3”

  1. at all, given it’s Kentucky in this political climate.  As you say, recent bruising primary and all.

    I’m optimistic about this race (though part of me would really like to see what sort of havoc Rand Paul would cause his own party if he got into the Senate).

  2. Granted, KY Dems aren’t the most reliable party voters but there is opportunity there.

  3. And the geography doesn’t suprise me — to win, Conway needs to rack up the vote in Louisville, do better than drawing even in the Bluegrass, and I think he’s got to win by a decent margin in the Mountain East.  I don’t think he’s going to do much better than he is now in the south or west of the state.

  4. It’s R2K, so Conway’s really down about 7 or 8.  Still, that’s not a bad starting point in a red state like Kentucky.  Still, you’d figure that Paul wouldn’t have such broad appeal among independents in the aftermath of his comments about civil rights, et al.

  5. This was the worst of the four potential matchups for the GOP, and Rand Paul had a rough week politically to say the least. Assuming he turns the gaffe machine off, this should be the low water mark for him.

  6. This poll appears to reflect a more realistic breakdown of the race at this early stage. Conway will have plenty of time to build his narrative and orchestrate a ground game to turn out the vote – which will be critical. It will be a very close race, but Paul is too ideological to stay on message and that will give Conway his opportunity to frame the election in terms of who is actually running to represent the interests and values of Kentucky.

  7. 43% of Grayson supporters explicitly said they will absolutely not support Paul.

    Does anyone know if 6% of republicans for Conway and that 8% of republicans undecided equals Graysons support from the primary?

    Or maybe they weren’t serious when answering that question.

  8. same way as the decideds based on party affiliation, this poll produces 50.4 Conway – 49.6 Paul.  Conway is getting 91.5% of decided Democrats and Paul is getting 93.5% of decided Republicans.  But 18% of Democrats are undecided, while just 8% of Republicans are.

  9. But let’s keep in mind that he was trailing in opinion polls before the primaries, too. Part of what we don’t know is how many potential voters are being discounted by the likely voter screen. 3 points is close enough to really depend on who turns out. So that’s a tossup, for now.

  10. I am watching this race closely because it is a good model to test my theory that Democrats can win in poor rural states if they offer to bring home enough bacon.  Lets be honest, these areas love their various forms of welfare (farm subsidies, coal subsidies, earmarks, all the personal forms of welfare, etc…).  PA-12 was a great example of this.  Democrats who promise to bring the bacon home win in poor rural areas because while they may still cling to their guns and religion, they cling their welfare even closer.

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