After initially facing uncertain prospects for his re-election, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appears set to prevail in Kentucky's hard-fought Senate race on Tuesday, a new poll has found.
According to a
Bluegrass Poll conducted Oct. 25-29 of 800 people, including 597 likely voters, the Republican has 48 percent support compared to 43 percent support for Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes. Six percent of voters are still undecided as the candidates enter their final weekend of campaigning.
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The results mark McConnell's strongest showing over four Bluegrass Polls that began at the end of August.
"After giving careful consideration to Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes throughout the spring and summer of 2014, and after weighing the pros and cons of punishing GOP icon Mitch McConnell, Kentucky's voters in the campaign's final week rally to the 5-term incumbent, and leave him ... well-positioned for re-election to a sixth term, and uniquely well-positioned to be majority leader when Republicans seize from Democrats control of the U.S. Senate on 11/04/14," read a statement released with the poll results.
According to the poll, McConnell has benefited from solidifying the Republican base.
In previous polls, GOP support for McConnell never broke 80 percent. In the current poll, it stands at 86 percent. At the same time, there has been a significant uptick in the number of Democrats who report they are voting for McConnell.
McConnell's campaign trumpeted the results.
"Across Kentucky the enthusiasm is growing behind Mitch McConnell's charge to have Kentucky lead America in a different direction from the Obama agenda," McConnell spokeswoman Alison Moore told Louisville's
Courier-Journal.
But the Grimes campaign insisted the race was still a dead heat, according to its internal polling.
"We're going to build a strong ground game. We have over 4,000 volunteers who are knocking on doors today; that will be doubled by the time of the election," Grimes' campaign manager, Jonathan Hurst, told the Courier-Journal. "We feel very confident going into this weekend. In fact, the campaign has never felt more confident."
Other polls over the last several weeks have also put McConnell in the lead by as much as 8 points.
The Clintons lent their strong support to Lundergan Grimes from early in her campaign, both
on the campaign trail and
on the airwaves.
Throughout the campaign, Lundergan Grimes sought to distance herself from President Barack Obama, whose favorability rating in the state is just 27 percent.
She made headlines earlier this month for repeatedly refusing to say whether
she voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.