An eye-popping Rasmussen poll (5/22, likely voters) this morning shows Democratic senate candidate Bruce Lunsford leading Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell– yes, you read that right, leading McConnell:
Bruce Lunsford (D): 49
Mitch McConnell (R-inc): 44
(MoE: ±4.5)
Granted, it's a long way from here to election day, and McConnell is already tying Lunsford to Barack Obama, who, as we all know, is not especially popular in Kentucky. Still, the fact that a Democratic candidate is polling this well against the senate minority leader, in a blood-red state, is a heartening development. I'm just hoping that Tom Daschle's iPod includes James Brown's "The Big Payback" . . .
Update (James): It’s worth noting that earlier this month, Lunsford trailed McConnell by 36% to 48% in a poll commissioned by the Lexington Herald-Leader. Rasmussen’s been giving us an awful lot of good news lately. Maybe too much good news.
Update II (James): Like clockwork, the McConnell campaign has released an internal poll conducted around the same time showing the Senator leading Lunsford by 50%-39%.
Lunsford paints himself as a guy in the middle. Hell, possibly right of center. Everyone in Kentucky knows that. He’s run for governor twice. The only way they are going to kill his support from the right effectively is if they artificially paint Lunsford black for their tv ads, hugging Barack Obama.
I think Rasmussen is one of the top two or three, if not the best pollster, but I cannot believe this result. Being down 12 pts to Pat Roberts and Susan Collins is plausible, but this result is really hard to believe.
Hey, I hope I am wrong. But if it is true — WOW WOW WOW. The GOP brand is done this year.
Luallen and Chandler are kicking themselves about now for not jumping in.
Worst case is Lunsford loses and spends a lot of money forcing McConnell to spend a lot of money and to be preoccupied from his duties as majority leader.
Best case is Lunsford pulls off a huge upset by defeating the sitting republican majority leader and we don’t even have to spend much to help him out since he can self-fund.
for someone to post a clip of Peter Boyle saying “holy crap” onto this thread? i have dialup so, yeah i can’t, but could someone? because, i mean, HOLY CRAP!!!
holy shit.
We should have known this was going to happen. Democrats are consolidating behind Lunsford, he has made 2 (1 strong) runs for Governor so he had support among Democrats in state anyway and now the rest and coalescing behind him as they realize that while he may not be Crit Luallen, he’s much much better than McConnell.
second, McConnell has had some in state fights with Republicans, particularly the crowd that supported Ernie Fletcher. Lunsford endorsed Fletcher after his first run for governor. McConnell worked against him in the primary with Anne Northup. I would not at all be surprised to find out that many Republicans from the Fletcher crowd are supporting Lunsford.
Third, McConnell’s views are well known to be far to the right. His job as minority leader brings out his far right wing views everytime. Independents in the state aren’t going to like that. they are indpendent because they AREN’T far right wing Republicans themselves.
So here we are with a Democrat, who has the entire party behind him, with Republicans behind him because McConnell screwed them and with Indpendents seeing bi-partisan support which means he isn’t as progressive as we’d like and he isn’t a super conservative like McConnell and all that spells my friends is victory.
This is why I liked the idea of Bruce Lunsford from the get go, he won’t make the best Senator in the world, but he’ll be a hell of a lot better than Mitch McConnell.
Please let this be true. And please let Lunsford pour like 20 million of his corrupt money into this race. Lunsford is a horrible Democrat but still. Beating Mitch would be amazing.
Let’s see another poll, please?
That seems to lend some credibility to the fact that this we are no worse than 5 points down in this race.
I think the right number is somewhere in between, with Mitch up a small handful of points, but below 50 percent. I would take that too, btw. Mitch has to be getting nervous, as evidenced by him quickly dumping this poll, but I am not going to start popping champagne corks yet.
to the good former senator from South Dakota, but I suspect his Victrola contains a wax recording of Thomas Edison singing Mary Had a Little Lamb.
On national trend to Democrats, the generic partisan split in Kentucky this year predicts to around 47/53.
That being said, McConnell getting a good scare and being put on notice that he’s getting at most one more term…pretty enjoyable.
And Rasmussen is known for having a very slight repub. bias.
States we lead in:
VA by 18
NM by 16 I’m assuming Pearce wins the repub nomination
NH by 7
CO by 6
KY by 5
AK by 2
NC by 1
States we’re down by <10 points
MN down 2
OR down 3
TX down 4
ME down 10
So in total Rasmussen has us either leading or within the MoE in 10 races. And that is not including Mississippi, Oklahoma and Idaho where they havn’t polled yet.